A-IiOUSE-HUNTER' 
■IN EUROPE- 




LiBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Slielf-..Bi53 



UNIlJKl) STATES OF AMEEICA. 



A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 



BY ^ 

I 

WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP 

AUTHOR OF 

" OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVINCES" " DETMOLD 

" THE HOUSE OF A MERCHANT PRINCE" ETC. 




JUN 27 ^893/ 



NEW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1893 



Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers. 

All rights reserved. 



i* C OWGR ESsf 

ashingtokI 






CONTENTS 



FIRST PERIOD 

CHAPTER 

I. — House-hunting and Housekeeping, from the Port 
of Cherbourg to Stately Versailles, 

II. — A Balconied Apartment in Paris, . 
III. — A Glimpse of Paris Social Life, . 
IV. — A Paris Exposition in Dishabille, . 

V.-— Houses and Gardens in the Suburbs of Paris, 

SECOND PERIOD 

VI. — Nevers, and a Tune on a Faience Violin, 
VII. — The Cities of Provence, and especially Avignon, 
VIII. — With the New Troubadours at Avignon, 
IX. — A First Look at the Riviera; and Up and Down Al 
geria, ....... 

X. — Spain, and especially Granada, 
XI. — Ole — Mulas ! — Stage-coaching to Old Jaen, . 
XII. — Cordova, Seville, and About Pretty Spanish Women 
XIIL— To Madrid, and When You Get There, . 
XIV.— A Day in Literary Madrid, .... 

XV. — Ascetic Escorial and Sculptured Salamanca, 
XVI. — Being a Bachelor of Salamanca, 
XVII. — " Ifs" and " Buts" Through the Pyrenees, Gascony 
Touraine, and the Orleans Country, 



I 
15 
30 
44 

58 



66 

84 
93 

106 
120 
129 
138 
149 
154 
174 
184 

203 



THIRD PERIOD 

XVIII. — A French Moving — to the Land of Mignon's Song, 210 

XIX. — A Year in a Mediterranean Villa, .... 221 

XX. — The Gamblers' Paradise of Monte Carlo, . . 238 
iii 



IV CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXI. — A Rural Passion-Play at Cabbe-Roquebrune, . . 251 
XXII. — Our Eligible Neighbors, the Queen and the Em- 
peror, ........ 259 

XXTII. — How it was in the Island of Corsica, . . . 279 

XXIV. — A New Pilgrimage to Canterbury, and to London, 

Windsor, and Oxford, ..... 292 

FOURTH PERIOD 

XXV. — Spying out the Land in Italy. — From Pisa, Lucca, 

and the Baths of Lucca, to Rome, . . . 302 

XXVI. — For and Against Florence, Siena, Perugia, and 

Venice, ........ 3^6 

XXVII. — Six Months in a Palazzina at Verona, . . . 330 

XXVIII. — Would You Summer at Bosco Chiesanuova? . . 344 

XXIX. — Some Italian Housekeepers, and Conclusion at Nice, 351 



A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 



CHAPTER I 



HOUSE-HUNTING AND HOUSEKEEPING FROM THE PORT 
OF CHERBOURG TO STATELY VERSAILLES 

In the next place, then — for the prejudice against 
going back to the beginning of the world to tell how it 
all came about is really too well founded, — in the next 
place, then, we landed at Cherbourg, — in the last days 
of July. 

It is no " editorial we " that is here employed : the 
pronoun refers to a family of two which had been mar- 
ried about a couple of years, to a day. We are by no 
means to hold up our modest housekeeping experiences 
here as a model, — indeed, I fear we shall too often 
prove only "the horrible example;" but we have 
thought they might have some small interest of novelty, 
and a value if only on this very ground of showing peo- 
ple what to avoid if not what to imitate. 

When we had spoken, before leaving home, of being 
gone two years, our friends in America had called it a 
long time, and we ourselves hardly believed in so much. 
But, in the sequel, our experiment extended its propor- 
tions to nearly five years instead of two. And, what is 
more, from this warm, sunny, fragrant Riviera which 



2 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

became our harbor of refuge after many wanderings, 
we are scarce ready even yet to depart. 

We had no set destination. We did not want a great 
many of the things that other people want ; we were 
not in search of good schools, musical advantages, im- 
proving society, in the usual sense, nor a climate to 
restore our shattered health. We wanted to gratify to 
the full that taste for antiquity and romantic tradition 
which is so very American, for all that it is the way of 
the world to represent us as so exclusively modern and 
practical. And we wanted to test personally the 
cheapness of foreign living, of which we hear so much. 
Our theory was that, a man of letters could write as 
well, or as ill, on one side of the water as the other; 
and the advice to reduce one's divisor, if he can't in- 
crease his dividend, could not be carried out so favor- 
ably in any other way. When we come to figures, it 
will be seen that the promise was justified, and notable 
economies were really possible. Indeed, I fear people 
looking for practical advice would do well to take our 
prices " and upward, " as the hotel-keepers say; for it 
would be rather difficult to depart much from them 
downward. 

Other people simply travelled, we meant to keep 
house, in romantic places, and see the life through and 
through. That should be our form of originality. We 
had an idea we might even seek first some quiet French 
village, and find entertainment enough there. There 
would certainly be some good architecture, which is 
scattered everywhere, and plenty of history, — perhaps, 
for the American habit, used to making much of a lit- 
tle, there would be even too much. We would go one 
day to the local fete^ another to see the administration 



HOUSE-HUNTING AND HOUSEKEEPING 3 

of justice, another to a marriage at the inairie^ and the 
like. We should probably get acquainted with the 
mayor, the doctor, the acre\ and other local dignitaries; 
— in short, we should be in a position to study the place 
in complete and satisfactory detail. What is the mat- 
ter with such a programme ? And, then, if it be true, 
as our critics represent, that the best material for fiction 
is the vestiges of foreign life that linger about our 
shores, there must be infinitely more in plunging over 
head and ears into foreign life itself, — foreign life free 
from admixture with any Americanism. Remark that I 
say, skeptically, if it be true, for our plan had no need 
of this argument at least. 

So now, I begin. 

It almost seemed at first as if Cherbourg itself would 
do. There, all at once, were the traditional French at- 
mosphere, the silvery-gray, warm tones, the uniforms, 
the peasants, men in Millet-blue blouses, and women in 
white caps fresh as snowflakes, and Napoleon prancing 
on horseback in a wide paved square, and promising 
to renew in the navy yard before him " the marvels of 
Egypt." A beach with a pretty Casino, too; but 
these were suffering, like all the bathing-beaches along 
the coast, from an exceptionally cold summer. Brit- 
tany and its neighborhood are a rainy country at best, 
and its drawback was unusually manifest that year. It 
did not rain all the time, it is true, and the broken 
gleams of sunshine gave charming effects of light. 
Still, no sooner was your umbrella down than you must 
put it up again, and no sooner was it up than you must 
put it down again — which finished by becoming embetanty 
as they say in the country. 

Cherbourg was not even a very good place to rest in. 



4 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

We connect with it an uncommon clatter of wooden 
shoes over the stones, a booming of heavy carts and 
cabs, a shrieking of whistles in the port, a piping of 
bugles and a trotting along of troops, very early in the 
morning, at that double-quick pace which has become 
the recognized gait of the modern French soldier. 

We did not ask the price of any houses at Cherbourg, 
but we first became acquainted there with the " Saint 
Michel " whose name figures so prominently on the bills 
of all houses to let. I believe we had, for a moment, 
an idea that the places were billed "/<??/r le jour de Saint 
Michel prochain'' (Saint Michael's day next coming) 
in view of some possible fine street procession, of which 
their windows might afford an exceptional view. It 
stands simply for the beginning of the October term, 
— "the Michaelmas term," as the English would say. 

From that day primarily or the ist of April second- 
arily, the renting of houses and apartments begins, and 
if you are not on hand at the time, to have the advan- 
tage of the general moving, you may expect to have to 
put up with rather poor leavings. 

We took our few days of needed repose, instead, at 
Mont Saint Michel. From that island rock, one pro- 
digious abbey, so curious and good after its kind that 
the government has made a national monument of it, 
we looked back across miles of wet shining sand to at- 
tractive-seeming Avranches, on its height. One would 
not exactly want to live at Mont Saint Michel, but it 
would be most charming to have its fascinations added 
to those of Saint Malo, Cancale, Concarneau, and all 
the rest, if he chanced to live in that district at all. A 
practical detail of the beds in the large old-fashioned 
room they gave us, up among the ramparts, was that 



HOUSE-HUNTING AND HOUSEKEEPING 5 

they were in closets, with folding doors. We thought 
the plan quite worthy of American invention, at first, 
but finding it in our modern Paris apartment, later on, 
we fell quite out of conctit with it, for those perverse 
doors were forever open when they should be shut, or 
shut when they should be open. 

We proposed to pass the hot weather at one of the 
little Brittany bathing-stations, before actively begin- 
ning our campaign; but the hot weather obstinately 
declined to appear. Dinard, the most considerable of 
these places, was much too modern to our eyes. The 
same reproach could not be made against fine old Saint 
Malo, walled in on its promontory, and with the genial 
clumsiness about its marine life that painters like. 

To me, there had always been something about a 
battlemented town on a height that well-nigh dispensed 
with all need of further recommendation. But will you 
believe it that everybody does not share this taste ? St. 
Malo would not have been bad at all, but prepare for 
astonishment when I tell you that even a person quite 

near to the expedition, that " Madame," that " S ," 

— ahem ! — in short, the other half of the expedition — 
whose opinion in the matter of home-making was nat- 
urally of high importance — did not like walled towns 
but felt that they gave you " a sort of shut-in feeling." 

Need one dwell upon the inexactness of this view, 
their sole reason for existence having been to give other 
people a shut-out feeling? However, it is a taste that 
may be acquired, — ^as well, let me say, as abated — and 
we came in our time to live in a walled town that would 
have warmed the heart of a Sir Walter Scott or a Frois- 
sart. 

Some English inhabit Saint Malo, and a dwelling 



6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

there, though dear if taken only for the summer season, 
would be reasonable for all the year round. It was the 
recollection of Victor Hugo's grandiose fiction, " The 
Toilers of the Sea," and of the melancholy harmonies of 
Chateaubriand, who is buried there, that chiefly led us 
to Saint Malo. It was Feyen-Perrin's poetic picture, at 
the Luxembourg, of " A Return of Oyster-Fishers," that 
led us to Cancale — and disappointment. Oysters are a 
controverted point internationally, and I do not enter 
upon that; and the cliffs and limpid greenish-blue water 
are lovely, but the Cancalaise women, instead of being 
the dream-maidens of the picture, balancing their nets 
against the sky as in a rhythmic procession with ban- 
ners, are plain, squalid, and awkward to a degree. 

These earlier wanderings served but as a preliminary 
to the little city of Dinan, eight or ten miles in the 
country, south of Dinard. We knew of Dinan before 
leaving America; romancers have dealt with it, and we 
had heard pleasant things of it from a group of artists 
and friends who used to go there to sketch. The 
prettiest way is up a little sylvan river, the Ranee, 
which narrows soon into a still more sylvan canal. The 
steamboat, running you aground a few times incidentally 
as it works its way up the exiguous channel, lands you 
under a fine high stone viaduct. Climbing a moderate 
steep to the town you pass through the old portcullised 
gateway of Jersual, part of the mediaeval defences left 
behind them by the dukes of Brittany; the bastions, 
crenelations, and donjon-keeps that yet exist in impos- 
ing prominence. Only, — in the interest of such as may 
dread gloomy impressions — the greater part of the old 
fortifications has been turned into a charming green 
promenade, a plan frequently adopted as a happy com- 



HOUSE-HUNTING AND HOUSEKEEPING 7 

promise, where such stern vestiges of antiquity are not 
swept away altogether. 

Dinan seems larger than its population, of but eight 
or nine thousand, would warrant. Perhaps the cobble- 
stones, all set thin edge upward, which make walking 
about in it a sort of penance, have something to do 
with the illusion. It is gray and ivy-grown, plentifully 
supplied with old arcaded houses, quaint shop-fronts, 
and the graver architectural monuments of a most in- 
teresting sort. 

The considerable English colony has built a quarter 
of its own, spick-and-span-new, little in keeping with 
the rest. It has an English church, good tennis courts, 
a circulating library, and an English club. At the lat- 
ter I found myself, though a stranger, heartily enter- 
tained by one who insisted that he must pay off to me 
an old favor he had received from some other American. 
The climate cannot be very severe in winter, as the 
character of the vegetation shows. I heard of a person 
who had kept a comparative record of temperatures 
here and at Cannes, and had found them to differ very 
little, though this is hard to believe except for some ex- 
ceptional season. 

Similar English settlements are scattered numerously 
over the Continent. Each has its peculiar reason for 
existence. Those throughout northern France have 
the advantage of the greater nearness to England; if 
you have occasion to run over to London, it is a very 
slight matter, and you do not impair your economies by 
the cost of long journeys. Although such settlements 
have been begun, as a rule, by artists or literary men, 
who have discovered something that especially pleased 
them in the spot, this modest class of people in- 



8 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

voluntarily create a publicity, and find themselves fol- 
lowed, and, in course of time, elbowed out, by not 
merely the well-to-do, but the great of the earth, who 
want to see for themselves localities that have become 
famous. There were major-generals, bishops, and 
hereditary titles of note among the frequenters -of 
Dinan ; and going, one day, on foot, to see the Renais- 
sance chateau of La Conninais, down in the valley by 
the mineral spring, I found it occupied by a great par- 
liamentary leader. The seeming check proved to be 
only an occasion for one more experience of English 
kindliness; though the occupants of an historic monu- 
ment are by no means held to be agreeable to the clients 
of an over-zealous guidebook, they deferred to the dis- 
appointed look with which I was turning away, and 
the family themselves showed me, there, all that it was 
important to see. 

1 went further on, in this same jaunt, to the ruins of 
La Garaye, a chateau of the elegant Francis L period, 
looking like an abandoned fairy palace in its lonesome 
wood. I should not otherwise have acquired that inti- 
mate idea it is desirable to have of the country sur- 
rounding one's immediate abode. I should not have 
known, for instance, about that system of sunken roads 
which cross the land without ever being visible from 
its surface. They are often ten or twelve feet deep, — 
deep enough to hide not only a pedestrian, but a whole 
farm-wagon with its load; and in their sunless depths 
linger clayey mire and standing pools. There is a 
mystic solemnity on the face of the land as if the spirit 
of its old Druids hovered over it still ; it would require 
plenty of sunshine to brighten it, but sunshine, unfor- 
tunately, it does not get. The peasants are silent and 



HOUSE-HUNTING AND HOUSEKEEPING 9 

solemn, too, in keeping with the prevailing tone. The 
Brittany school of painters have shown us much of this, 
but somehow there is such a decorative quality in the 
pottery, embroideries, and furniture they depict, and 
even in the costumes of sombre blue or black, relieved 
by the sparkling white of the women's caps, that you 
do not believe in so much gravity till you have seen it 
for yourself. 

The very first house we looked at, at Dinan, was 
charming. It seemed to have been a large farm 
grange now made over into a villa. The approach was 
through a farm garden, and thence by a green door in 
a wall, and through a flower garden. It had pleasant 
nooks, blue and white wall-papers and chintzes, and 
many of the old oak Breton wardrobes, with rich brass 
mountings, which the English proprietor had picked up 
in peasant interiors of the district. But it was much 
too large for us; and besides it was furnished, and we 
had already begun to talk of buying our own furniture, 
to have artistic " finds " and bargains for ourselves. The 
rent, too, was something like a thousand dollars a year, 
whereas we were carrying in mind, as a basis, an old 
manor-house, half-way between Trouville and Honfleur, 
for which, meagrely furnished, it is true, an American 
family we had known had paid but four hundred dollars 
a year. 

Of z^^zfurnished habitations there was a dearth, as there 
is apt to be. The foreign colony would not be likely 
to offer them, and the truth was forced upon us that if 
you want something attractive and hygienic in the older 
part of such small places where there is little moving, 
it must be a matter of long previous search and nego- 
tiation. Perhaps you might pay somebody handsomely 



lO A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

to turn out for you, but I am not sure that even that 
could be done. A small apartment, not bad after you 
once got there, could have been had in a sculptured old 
hotel, near the Place des Cordeliers, for three hundred 
francs, but the entrance was vilely impossible. In the 
Place Saint Sauveur, facing close up to the buttresses 
of the gray old church, with a view of the sylvan valley, 
over the parapet, there was vacant a small stone house, 
for five hundred francs. Here we could have drunk 
deep our draught of mediaevalism ; but the house faced 
due north ; it was in a condition to need cleaning with 
shovels rather than brooms, and water trickled in rivu- 
lets down the natural rock of its foundations. 

An uneasy feeling that it was necessary to wait for the 
rain to stop, and to see how the places would appear by 
settled daylight, impeded all this house-hunting. But 
the rain did not stop; it increased. The destiny of 
men is dependent, after all, upon small circumstances. 
Brittany was not on the cards for us. We left damp, 
gray, dripping Dinan behind us, and set out for Paris. 
In a great capital, we said, distractions can be found 
even in the rain. 

On the way, the weather perversely turned hot and 
dusty, and our sudden resolution was shaken. We 
looked with a certain longing at Chartres, then at 
Rambouillet, but did not really yield to temptation till 
we reached Versailles, which had been on our vague 
mental list. 

Captivated by the great park of Le Notre and the 
traditions of the court of Louis XIV., we left the train 
at Versailles, and tried housekeeping in lodgings for a 
month. Our lodging was on the Rue de la Paroisse, — I 
need not indicate more closely, as nothing is to be said 



HOUSE-HUNTING AND HOUSEKEEPING IT 

in praise of it. We used to go through the Gate of the 
Dragon, opening just at the end of our street, past the 
Basin of Apollo, and so up to the esplanade in front of 
the palace. The Basin of Apollo is where the best 
of the fountains play, in the grand monthly exhibition 
of spouting waters; but in our day it was torn up for 
wholesale repairs, and we used to hurry by it as rapidly 
as possible. We tired ourselves — an agreeable, well- 
paid fatigue, — in the endless galleries of the palace, but 
there were few days when the weather allowed us to 
enjoy the yet more enchanting delights of the park. 

Finally there came one such, a perfect summer day, 
so delightful among those vast alleys and vagaries of 
clipped foliage, with the quaint population of statues, 
as to wipe out a multitude of disappointments. We 
took our lunch and spent a long day at the further end 
of the park, a point so remote that it used to seem as if 
nobody had ever been there before. The hasty tourists 
from Paris scurry about the palace and near alleys, and 
rarely go beyond the Trianons. We rested in the shade, 
by the high railing that cuts off the royal domain from 
the farming-country of Saint Cyr. There all around 
were vast carpet-like stretches of greensward, and the 
roads, between the noble straight avenues, are green- 
sward, too, hardly marked by a single wheel-track. 
You see only an ancient woman gathering fagots, like 
a witch, or a solitary officer trying the paces of a new 
charger, preparatory to going down to command his 
men, who are throwing pontoons back there, over the 
neglected southern arm of the great fish-pond. 

The palace is much better from that great distance 
than near by ; its slope of ground serves it as a pedestal ; 
and, what with the play of light and shade upon it, and 



12 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the delicious long vista, you do not mind so much its 
monotonous drab tone and total lack of sky-line. The 
formal park has here relapsed into nature again, like some 
fine old gentleman of the old regime who has abandoned 
the artificial court-life and taken to philosophy and 
simple rural tastes. There is something extremely 
grateful, restful, and pensive about these noble alleys 
of green, going on and on and on in unbroken direct- 
ness. I should think one might be very happy who had 
the chance to walk in them often. We still think the 
choice of Versailles was a good one, and look back to it as 
the pleasantest of all the suburbs of Paris, though the ex- 
ceptional season pursued us, and ended by driving us 
away. 

The town itself used to be silent, without gayety, 
sunk in slumber, soon after nightfall. Even the tram- 
way seemed to steal away to Paris, on its wide shaded 
avenue, with a discreet, hushed air. 

A certain Hortense, a nice-looking young person, 
reticent, and sad in expression, as if she had some his- 
tory to conceal, did our cooking for us, and gave us our 
first acquaintance with the useful femme de me'nage 
system. The femme de menage comes to do your day's 
work, or any part of it you like, for about six cents an 
hour, and returns to her home to sleep. It is a recog- 
nized thing, like going to a trade or other occupation. 
By this system, you do not have to provide a chamber 
for her, and if she comes only a part of the day you do 
not even have to feed her. I mention, for the moment, 
only the advantageous side of the system. 

At Versailles, S , flanked by Hortense as chief of 

staff, after an attempt alone, did her earliest marketing. 
It is a veritable ordeal, as she represented to me, and 



HOUSE-HUNTING AND HOUSEKEEPING 1$ 

the worst of it is, it has to be renewed in each new 
foreign country, and, to some extent, al-ways continues. 
Insidious or crabbed old women stare hard at you, to 
put you out of countenance if possible by their ap- 
preciation of the fact that you are a novice and a 
stranger. They practise extortion on all hands, and 
return impudence, or affect to toss back their lettuce or 
plums into the heap in disdain, if you attempt to bar- 
gain. I think no masculine mind, in superior pride of 
intellect, need smile at the difficulty of mastering all the 
new qualities and quantities of the received kinds of 
provisions, and keeping out a proper eye for taking 
novelties. To estimate in kilogrammes and litres in- 
stead of in pounds and quarts, and in francs and cen- 
times instead of dollars and cents, is simple in cold 
blood, I grant you ; but to do it under fire, and still 
know where you are in your economies, is a matter of 
long and serious practice. Suppose it is suddenly sprung 
upon you, for instance, that you have eggs to the amount 
of soixante-dix centimes, mushrooms to quatre-vingt- 
quinze^ and four hektos of butter at trente-huit the hekto, 
will you remember instantly that these are simple four- 
teen, nineteen, and seven and three-fifths cents respec- 
tively, and that four hektos is four-tenths of a kilo, 
which is two and one-tenth pounds? I should very 
much doubt it. 

Then, too, the language comes in. However glib you 
may be at it, this will not always serve; for the lower 
orders of people, the world over, mouth and chop their 
words, and change them into a patois^ which is quite 
unintelligible and has to be a-cquired separately. 

" Even if they send in a written account, it isn't much 
better," S , complained, in those days. "They 



14 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

make their figures all alike, and nothing is distinct but 
the sum total." 

However, this is one of the conditions of the problem; 
it is an ordeal to be met, — the earlier and more bravely, 
the better. A personal acquaintance with the prices is 
indispensable as a check upon others, even if the market- 
ing is afterward to be committed to assistants. Surel}^ 
some of the hardships should be offset, too, by the 
never-failing supply of humorous episodes, the novelty 
of the wares, and the bright, bustling character of these 
market scenes, in which indeed a good part of foreign 
picturesqueness resides. 



CHAPTER II 

A BALCONIED APARTMENT IN PARIS 

When the rain still came down and soaked the gay- 
eties of a gingerbread fair, and put out its strings of 
paper lanterns, it dampened anew our fancy for rural 
life, and again we turned our attention toward Paris. 

I went in first to see what could be done in the way 
of permanent quarters there, and we soon found some- 
thing to our liking and took possession. Among other 
vague plans we had contemplated was one that it would 
be pleasant, if feasible, to live a year in each of the 
great capitals of Europe in turn. Paris proper had en- 
tered no more into our scheme than any other, but 
nothing could be better to begin with than Paris. 

In Paris of course we must expect to live rather high, 
as the houses are six and seven stories in the air. Ex- 
cept in the most expensive, there are no "lifts," or 
"elevators." But how often you hear it said by people 
at home, enthusiasts for foreign life, that abroad you 
do not mind all that, stairs and the rest, as you would 
here! — they are the custom, and then there are so 
many distractions and charms, and then and then, and 
so forth. We came to have a different opinion later; 
you do mind them. But we had no great prejudice, 
for the moment, against a quatri^me or even a cinquihne 
story. 

We ruled out the quarter about the Arc de Triomphe, 

15 



1 6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the colony of the wealthy strangers, and plunged into 
more thoroughly French surroundings. That exception 
apart, we were governed by no narrow exclusiveness, 
for we searched sites so far apart as the hill of Mont- 
martre ; the Place des Vosges, in the Marais, with the 
house of Madame Sevigne; the Luxembourg; and the 
Invalides. 

Montmartre is the most picturesque thing in Paris; 
and, as it is a landmark from every side, it repays its 
prominence by returning you a wide view over the city 
and country. I recollect there, years before, a young 
American literary man and painter, known to fame, who 
w^ith the aid of a Greek servant brought back from the 
Russo-Turkish war led a charming life in a small house 
of his own. It was entered through a green door in a 
garden wall, and what the standing fascination is of a 
green door in a garden wall, I shall leave to others to 
explain. 

Well, the old studios were all there, along the boule- 
vards below ; the view was as fine as ever from the 
windmills; the great votive church, building ever since 
the war, was finished; but, whether I had forgotten its 
address or the small house itself had disappeared, I 
could not find it, high nor low. The quarter itself had 
grown more shabby and disreputable than of old, and 
we were told afterward that it was not pleasant, at all 
times, for ladies to pass along through its teeming noisy 
life. 

On the whole, the staider portion of the Latin 
Quarter, under the shade of the university and schools, 
seemed the most promising for our case. Away from 
the dazzle of the great shops and the mighty rush of 
the central boulevards, it would naturally, we said, 



A BALCONIED APARTMENT IN PARIS 1 7 

have the habit of dealing with frugal-minded people, 
and looking with content upon moderate prices. There 
are some houses along the Rue Madame and the Rue 
du Luxembourg giving, either front or rear, upon the 
Luxembourg garden. That seemed a particularly at- 
tractive point. * We had not been satiated with clipped 
vegetation and statuary at Versailles, only tantalized, 
and if we could have the ancient plaisance of Catherine 
de Medicis under our eyes, it would be well worth while. 

The sign " To Let " was out on a fresh-looking house 
in the Rue du Luxembourg. It had only a cinquieme, 
a fifth story, however. It was large enough, consisting 
of a salon^ dining-room, three principal bedrooms, and 
the appurtenances. 

"And the price?" to the beaming concierge. 

A concierge, on first or brief acquaintance, is always 
beaming. 

"Two thousand francs, M'seu et 'Dame." 

" That is the lowest ? " 

" Mon Dieu! one can always see the proprietor; there 
is no harm in that. " 

Generally there is a small diminution on seeing the 
proprietor in person; you cannot count on much. We 
thought a fifth story at two thousand francs too high in 
several senses, though I dare say, considering the ac- 
commodation, it was not excessive. 

Accident led us into the pleasant quarter of the In- 
valides, which I doubt if we should ever have thought of 
looking up expressly. It remained then a sort of slack- 
water point, tranquil, roomy, .healthy, and reasonable 
in price, with all Paris about it, the rich, fashionable 
districts one way, and overcrowded, grimy Faubourgs 
the other. I didn't quite understand it, but fancy that 

2 



l8 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

another tramway line or two would finish it, and set it 
swirling in the general movement. In that precinct 
people would tell you, as in America, they recollected 
well when there was nothing but gardens where you 
now saw great blocks of houses. 

The gilded dome of the Invalides presides over it, 
like a fine local planet, to take the place of the sun 
when that is missing — which is often. Numerous wide 
avenues, planted in quadruple or octuple rows of shade- 
trees, cross at obtuse angles and make a sort of con- 
tinuous garden. They take the names of notables of 
the old regime, the stout admirals Duquesne and De 
Suffren, and marshals De Villars and De Saxe, and they 
keep the Invalides in view as their general objective 
point. It is a part of the stately Faubourg Saint Ger- 
main, and there still remain a number of fine old resi- 
dences of the great families standing free in their own 
grounds. We were fortunate enough to have those of 
the Prince de Leon and the Count de Chambrun under 
our own eyes — both real chateaux. 

In the Place Saint Fran9ois Xavier, there was a 
ground-floor, for fourteen hundred francs. The rooms 
were large and fine, with gas for cooking, as well as a 
range, and the house was exceptionally handsome, the 
entrance-hall, for instance, fifteen or twenty feet wide, 
and in tessellated marble. We should have made an 
excellent impression on our friends, in that house; but 
we agreed that there was something gloomy about 
a ground floor, no matter how many basements might 
be under it. Nothing else was vacant except at the 
very top, a seventh story, which was to be had for 
twelve hundred francs. In another handsome house, 
just around the corner, on the Avenue de Villars, was a 



A BALCONIED APARTMENT IN PARIS I9 

fifth story for eleven hundred and fifty francs. There 
were, naturally, more of these high apartments to rent 
than any others; my impression, too, is, that the ex- 
posure of most was northerly. 

We found our affair at last, about the Avenue Du- 
quesne and the Avenue de Breteuil. It was an entresol 
that first caught our eye. It was up only one pair of 
stairs, and no more than eight hundred francs. The 
house was fresh-looking and sufficiently comme il faut. 

There were shops under it, it is true,— as there were 
not under the others mentioned, but it is the custom to 
have shops under your house, on the Continent. We 
were on the point of taking it — but why put too fine a 
point upon it? we did take it, and had to get out of it 
afterward by means of negotiation and exchange. As 
the days were gray, the matter of determining our ex- 
posure was difficult; and an unblushing concierge had 
assured us that a flood of sunshine poured into that en- 
tresol. When we came to verify it, we found that no 
ray of sun could ever reach it (except in midsummer) ; 
since it looked due north. 

The alternative was a cinquieme; the price the same. 
We climbed to it up a neat, well-kept staircase, waxed 
and polished. It cannot be gainsaid that it was a long 
pull, but it would have been impossible not to be de- 
lighted with the brightness there, the quite remarkable 
view, when it was reached. 

There were the Place, the fine church, and the two 
chateaux in front; the long lines of trees of the boule- 
vard ; the Invalides to the left, the artesian-well tower 
to the right, and notable monuments in the far dis- 
tance, even the dome of the Pantheon and the Tower 
of Saint Jacques. A balcony ran all along our windows. 



20 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

It is the custom in a great Paris house to give you a 
balcony only on the fifth story, partly out of compas- 
sion, I suppose, and on the first ; the latter on the prin- 
ciple of overloading him that already hath. The morn- 
ing sun used to come in, and reflect from the polished 
parquetry floors; the wall-papers were in good taste; 
the dining-room was wainscoted in cherry; the little 
kitchen had half the look of an alchemist's laboratory, 
with its facing of colored tiles. 

Nothing could be more cheerful. Whenever we went 
among our friends, now in spick-and-span Rue de Bas- 
sano, now in dark and narrow old Rue Notre Dame des 
Champs, Rue Galilee, and Rue Washington, and even — 
yes, even in Rue Marbeuf and Avenue Marceau, we al- 
ways came back thinking our own apartment much the 
best. No doubt, too, our friends all went away scold- 
ing at our stairs, which they continued to climb, never- 
theless, with charming amiability. 

Later we were sometimes inclined to ask ourselves 
the use of all our early stir about sunshine, when we 
found how little sun a Paris winter really includes. 

The rent did not comprise ten francs to the concierge, 
necessary to pay to bind the bargain, twenty francs for 
water, sixteen francs for door and window tax, etc., 
nor fifty francs for a house tax, which we did not know 
about till the end of the year ; so that the sum total was 
about nine hundred francs instead of eight. But think 
how little you get for a hundred and eighty dollars, in 
any American city! The difference carries with it the 
sacrifice of various conveniences: thus you have your 
high staircase; the cooking done by charcoal ; larhps in- 
stead of gas; no fixed bath-tubs, only portable bath-tubs 
of your own; but, on the other hand, it can easily be 



A BALCONIED APARTMENT IN PARIS 



21 



made most comfortable, it is charming and highly re- 
spectable, whereas at home such a rent would mean im- 
possible squalor. 

You pay a quarter in advance, if you wish to go 
away, you are held to give a conge^ or notice, of three 
months. Our quarter began the 15th of October, but, 
as the lodging had been standing vacant, we were al- 
lowed to take possession long before, without extra 
charge. 

One often admires the ingenuity of design in the Paris 
apartments. They are adapted to every variety of size 
and space, yet are almost always compact, well arranged, 
and sightly. A diagram will make ours clearer than a 
description. 




The salon was about fifteen. feet in width; the other 
dimensions can be judged of from that. The principal 
bedroom was well lighted from a large court, the 
kitchen and corridor from a small one. Off the dining- 
room was the curious closet alcove for a bed, already 
mentioned. The three charcoal-holes of the kitchen, 
to which various odd contrivances for roasting, etc. 



2 2 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

were adapted, proved insufficient for cooking, and we 
put in a small portable range, called, I patriotically 
mention, difourneau Americain. 

The furnishing of our new domain, modest as it was, 
took more than a month, principally because we in- 
sisted upon picking up each piece separately, and tried 
to get pieces with something of a history. There were 
dealers on the Avenue de Lamotte Piquet, about the 
Military School, and elsewhere, who rented furniture 
to officers, students, and others; but this plan, on ex- 
amination, did not seem cheap. Our total outlay for 
furniture might have been something like four hundred 
dollars. This would have been high for a single year, 
but, spread over all the years of our stay, it has been, 
even with expenses of moving, an economy as well as a 
coijifort. 

I state in a word my theory of furnishing, a sort of 
impressionist theory. The value of your materials is 
really of no consequence. 

The only satisfactory result is got from the broadly 
decorative effects of color, contrast, general mass, and 
form. If you can have beautiful textures and rich 
quality, so much the better, but you need not much re- 
gret the lack of them. 

This is an especially good travelling theory. So a 
considerable part of the expense went into stuffs, voiles 
de Genes^ etc., easy to roll up and carry along; into a 
lot of fine large photographs of the Brogi collection, 
from the Italian galleries; and into Breton and other 
faience, to put upon the walls. All of which, too, 
might well enough go back to America, one day. Our 
salon was in white and large-flowered chintzes; the 
numerous picture frames were made of simple, light 



A BALCONIED APARTMENT IN PARIS 23 

wood, flat, and covered with the same chintzes. This 
warmed up the grave tone of the photographs, and car- 
ried the color below harmoniously round the walls. 
Another chintz, of a tapestry pattern, at sixteen sous 
the metre, went well with the greenish paper and red- 
wood wainscot of the dining-room ; and Louis XVI. 
chintzes, blue and white, draped the alcove of the chief 
bedroom. 

Two good carved arm-chairs of the last century, style 
Jacob, came from our upholsterer, who had them on 
sale for a client. 

A harp-backed chair in nutwood came from a second- 
hand dealer near the ancient Hotel Rambouillet, of 
famous literary and worldly reunions. Another honest 
dealer trundled over a large handcart from the Boule- 
vard Henri Quatre, all across Paris, with an Empire 
table and a console, both brass-mounted and gilded. 
He told us he had heard that Americans never bargained 
and was surprised that we should. 

While he mopped his heated brow he related the ex- 
perience of his shop in the days of the Commune. The 
windows were barricaded with mattresses, which became 
riddled with balls, and the shop was finally burned. 
The government had allowed him an indemnity of but 
a third its value, and this he had discounted one-half 
more, to have the money on reasonable time. I need 
not unfold all the secrets of our prison-house, in regard 
to furnishing; and, what is more, very likely you don't 
like my theory in the least. 

The care of this magnificence and the household de- 
volved upon Josephine, a femme de menage. She lived 
near at hand, and had a husband, a' cab-driver, and a 
small boy of five, Eugene, who used to play below on 



24 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the boulevard, keeping much as possible under her 
eye. We have seen her descend all the steep flights of 
stairs, in a fury, to shake her finger at one Louis Morel, 
a bold playmate, who had given small Eugene a claque. 
Then she would remount them again, with a healthy 
air as of duty performed. 

The weak point with the femme de manage is that 
she is a woman of family. Although she always de- 
clares in the beginning that her family is of such a sort 
as never to be seen or heard of, it becomes an occasion 
for continual humoring, and at last the overshadowing 
interest in life. It soon transpired, for instance, that 
little Eugene had no satisfactory person to take care of 
him during his mother's absence, so she began to bring 
him with her, and keep him in the kitchen. We often 
used to hear him advising her, in an old-fashioned way, 
about the cooking; and sometimes the poor little chap 
was there till ten o'clock at night, and would fall off 
his chair, dead beat out with sleep. 

It was half-pathetic, of course, but not in the least 
convenient ; and every femme de menage we tried or 
ever heard of had some impediment of that kind. 

In the view that all means to a speedy glibness in the 
language were legitimate, we transgressed some well- 
established canons, and I fear began to spoil our Jose- 
phine from the moment of sitting down to our very 
first meal. She little knew, poor soul, that it was her 
genders and adjectives and idiom upon which our ears 
were most keenly fixed in her long and rambling narra- 
tives. The warmth of her dialogue reconciled us to 
many a cold dish, and even to the entire loss of some 
we might have had reason to expect. Carried away by 
the interest of her personal experience, she would stand 



A BALCONIED APARTMENT IN PARIS 25 

with a dish in her hand, forgetful of all sublunary things. 
She had a gift of getting " rattled," half losing her wits 
on all great occasions. On the greatest of them all, as 
I might say, when we dined a man who had even written 
a book for the edification of gourmets, she gave us a 
soup that would have been open to criticism in a sailor 
boarding-house. He died a year or two afterward, 
poor fellow, and I have sometimes feared it was the 
lingering effects of that soup. 

Butchers, bakers, and grocers, all near at hand, 
brought our supplies up the long staircase and made 
nothing of it. Twice a week, moreover, a regular 
market was pitched under a continuous, light shed 
along the Avenue de Breteuil, holes being left in the 
asphalt for its posts. The wagons and mules that 
brought it were parked along each side, and the novel, 
animated spectacle was well worth looking down upon, 

especially when S and Josephine, with small Eugene 

in his blouse in their train, could be discerned moving 
about there, sagaciously making their purchases. At 
three o'clock precisely all must disappear; after that 
hour, to buy or sell was an indictable offence. 

Kfilet^ or net with handles, for carrying the market- 
ing, we thought another thing worthy to be of American 
invention ; it will carry as much as a market-basket, 
yet can be rolled up, when out of use, and put in your 
pocket. Similar markets occur in all parts of Paris, 
according to the days of the week. It is well to note 
if you are neighboring to one. Once, S ■ was peri- 
lously near incurring the majestic displeasure of the 
two promenading sergents de ville by buying something 
after three o'clock. 

"Put it down," said the market-woman, coming to 



26 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

her rescue with a deft suggestion. And so the small 
object was dropped back upon the stall, as if no pur- 
chase had been thought of, and justice was hoodwinked. 

A large saving in rent was evident, but we had feared 
this might be counterbalanced by greater cost of provi- 
sions. America being an agricultural land of plenty, 
we argued, food must naturally be cheaper there than 
in the countries to which it is forever exporting its 
surplus. 

On the contrary, we could not find that the cost of 
the necessaries of life here went above that at New 
York. 

As there will be but few remarkable, astonishing ad- 
ventures in this account, let it at least try to be a little 

useful. S reports that good beef, mutton, or veal 

are about twenty-two cents a pound ; choice filet^ or 
tenderloin, twice that. Butter is forty cents a pound, 
but it is always delicious fresh butter, never the salted 
kind we have at home. Eggs are three sous apiece at 
their dearest, every one perfect. Poultry is dear, but 
you have some good substitutes for it, as rabbit and 
hare. 

One of the first dishes Hortense made for us at Ver- 
sailles was a lapin saute. The meat was white, resembling 
chicken; it was cooked in hot butter and bits of bacon, 
with a glass of red wine and fresh mushrooms in the 
sauce. When this was flanked by crisp fried potatoes 
and tender green beans, and followed by a great de- 
licious heap of red raspberries, that cost comparatively 
nothing, treated with red wine and sugar, we thought 
that foreign life opened auspiciously. Fruits of the 
berry order and exquisite Reine Claude plums are 
plentiful and cheap. As much cannot be said of apples 



A BALCONIED APARTMENT IN PARIS 27 

and peaches, and the latter, though alluring to th^ view, 
are almost always unripe. Salads and green vegetables 
generally, owing to the milder climate, are much longer 
in season, always cheaper, and frequently so low that 
you long for capacity to consume unheard-of quantities, 
for fear such an occasion should never offer again. Milk 
is six cents a litre, a little more than a quart; only, in 
spite of the laws against adulteration, it is always of a 
thin quality, and you can hardly get it with the cream 
remaining on, no matter how much you pay for it. 

Wine — ah ! but is it wine any longer ? Since phyl- 
loxera ruined the vineyards, the problem of what to drink 
is a serious one, all the water being esteemed bad. 
Every American family resolves it in its own way. 

So here is a rude basis for comparison. Now what 
do you pay at home? S , in summing up the sub- 
ject, calls attention to two characteristic things of most 
important bearing. The first is the absence of ice, so 
indispensable in America ; you do not give it a thought, 
and feel better without it. The second is that the 
absence of ice and ice-boxes brings it about that pro- 
visions are purchased in much smaller quantities than 
with us. It is the thing to buy only enough for one 
day's use; and buying in small quantities is a distinct 
advantage and economy for small families, since there 
is less wasted and it gives plenty of variety without ex- 
travagance. The meats are cut differently, and every- 
thing else too is adapted to this system. You can 
buy excellent, juicy, roast beef to the value of a franc 
and a half, if you like, whereas the very smallest piece 
two people could buy at home, without being ridiculous, 
would have to keep reappearing in various forms for 
several days. 



28 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

"On the servant question," S says, "you may 

put in that, though Josephine would get but forty francs 
a month even if we kept her altogether, — that is to say, 
though servants' wages are much lower here, — one good 
servant in America does about as much as two or three 
over here. It is not all her own merit, for the houses 
in America are better arranged for housekeeping. There 
is no accommodation here for washing or drying clothes; 
you give the w^ashing to the blanchisseuse^ and the charge 
for it brings up the roll of wages." 

"On the other hand," I urge, "you have your ser- 
vant's time for yourself, and none of the traditional 
misery of washing-day." 

"You can't turn that into money, and you asked me 
for figures." 

Taking the pros and cons generally, for living abroad, 

S , who was no strong enthusiast for the scheme at 

first, was apt to argue as follows: Vastly cheaper rent; 
provisions and servants' wages not any dearer — proba- 
bly, on the whole, less; a brighter, freer life in an agree- 
able climate, — this, not till after we had found the agree- 
able climate, — and improving picturesque surroundings. 

"Put in," she adds, "that if even rich people, with 
everything to make life enjoyable at home, like so much 
to come over, it ought to be all the more attractive to 
those in modest circumstances. — No, don't put that in. 
It might bring over some with wholly different views 
from ours, who would get into all sorts of difficulties; 
they wouldn't want to give up the friends, local inter- 
ests, and duties to which they are attached; they 
might not like it at all.'' 

So I don't put that in — please consider it not put in. 

Winter came on early; it was cold by the ist of 



A BALCONIED APARTMENT IN PARIS 2<) 

October. We met the question of fire successfully with 
a cylindrical, air-tight, rolling stove, a modified form 
of the characteristic Choubersky, the real Choubersky 
being supposed to infallibly poison you while you sleep. 
Yet another invention worthy of introduction to Amer- 
ica: such was our highest form of praise. It could be 
rolled about from one room to another, if you wished, 
so as to heat all in turn ; and, with but a single charg- 
ing, I think it could have been made to keep the fire 
three days. 

Why had no one told us what to expect of a Paris 
winter ? Travellers come and go in the bright summer 
days, and do not know. In reality one is not much 
better off there than in London, these late years. 
A depressing gray sky hangs over your head; for ten 
days at a time you don't see the sun; the morning is 
about over before day has begun, and it is night by three 
o'clock. Do you ever conceive of the knights in armor, 
the chevaliers in their silks and velvets, and that sort of 
people, slopping about in the snow, rain, and mud ? It 
must have come up to their knees then, though it comes 
only to the ankles now. No American, at least, ever 
realizes that the winter climate of the greater part of 
Europe is very like his own. The knights in armor 
must have got very rusty at times. 

The worst day m? knew of was one of such genuine 
London fog that people had to carry lanterns, and got 
lost in the streets. And yet, it was not the worst either ; 
it was original, and made us the more content with our 
balcony. We could look down upon the fog billowing 
like a murky lake in the P/ace, while above the moon 
and stars were shining clearly over our heads. 



CHAPTER III 

A GLIMPSE OF PARIS SOCIAL LIFE 

Our balcony, with its varied views, its easy prospect 
of the usual life below, and of the soldiers who so often 
came there to drill under the trees, was a constant pleas- 
ure to us. We did not go to the great galleries, to the 
Louvre and the like anywhere near so often as we had 
expected. We had thought we should spend almost all 
our time there; but somehow, when you are a house- 
holder you put those things off; it is only the travellers 
who do them conscientiously. I broke away sometimes 
to the lectures of Renan and other great names at the 
Sorbonne and the College de France, freely open to all. 
The accommodations were stuffy, the benches hard, and 
you were surprised that proceedings the fame of which 
had reverberated so far should go on in such cheap and 
Spartan-like surroundings; but this was soon forgotten, 
and the intellectual treat was, by force of contrast, 
perhaps even greater than if delivered amid the luxuri- 
ous American school fittings and appliances. In some 
of these lecture-rooms there was standing-room only, 
and one, where Professor Deschanel discoursed on the 
French literature and language, I recollect as so 
packed on my arrival, fifteen minutes before the hour, 
that the doors could not even be opened. The amiable 
custodian said you must come an hour before the time 
to get a place. 

30 



A GLIMPSE OF PARIS SOCIAL LIFE 31 

I saw some little of the distinguished people who 
make the Revue des Deux Mondes^ in the charming 
Empire hotel, once that of Eugene Beauharnais, where 
Madame Buloz gives them delightful music. And I saw 
something of Daudet, then weak and suffering, and 
writing his play " The Struggle for Life," the title of 
which had an almost alarming pertinence. 

Then a little son was born to us, our first child, and 
was duly inspected, registered, and certified :;o at the 
mairie of the seventh arrondisement or ward. I have 
thought of writing a special account of Getting Born in 
Paris. There is material enough for it, but it was fol- 
lowed by long and dangerous illness, in the cosy aerial 
apartment with its balcony, and the effect might deepen 
too much the gloom of the Paris winter. One's atmo- 
sphere must. be made, after all, by his own experiences, 
and these impressions are only given for what they are 
worth. 

Although the contrast between the day of the Re- 
public and the Empire is great, the forms of social life 
in France in the upper strata are still very splendid. 
The numerous comfortable parlors and long palm-lined 
conservatory of the Palace of the Elysee, under Presi- 
dent Carnot, as well as the official hotels of his minis- 
ters, still present much imposing glitter. Court forms 
and a fine ceremonial remain the tradition. Chamber- 
lains with medals of ofiice usher you on and lackeys in 
gorgeous livery serve you at the buffets. Generals, 
a race of stocky, square-built men, and slimmer subal- 
tern officers salute their host with profound reverence, 
holding their pomponed shakos or plumed helmets in 
their hands. Broad ribbons and plentiful orders upon 
the breasts of civilians lend an additional color that an 



32 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

American drawing-room never can hope to have. And 
the women, the Parisian women of high degree, and 
the daring originality of their costuming! 

Yonder goes one, for instance, leaning upon the arm 
of a cabinet-minister who has lately distinguished him- 
self in a famous duel. She wears a dress of ruby vel- 
vet, extremely simple, audaciously low, held on indeed 
only by little straps over the shoulders. Very white 
teeth, full scarlet lips, an uncommonly diminutive and 
supple waist, such are the salient points of note as she 
glides onward. A rich diamond ornament glitters viv- 
idly on her white neck, and the whiteness of neck and 
arms is artfully set off the more by a starched Medici 
ruff of black lace and phenomenally long black kid 
gloves. At the ball or the opera, amid such women, it 
is the next thing, as it were, to a dream of Mahomet's 
paradise. 

Travelling Americans see comparatively more of this 
class than of any other. That is to say, they are more 
apt to see the princes, dukes, and counts, who survive 
from mediaeval memory and constitute a more or less 
pleasant sort of human bric-a-brac, than they are to see 
simple commoners. They are likely to see either the 
upper class or none at all. The reproach is often made 
that the members of the various foreign colonies, 
Americans, English, and other, will come abroad only to 
shut themselves up in hermit-like exclusiveness and see 
nobody but themselves, nothing of the genius of the 
country. I do not think this is altogether their own 
fault. I think they most often come with an admiring 
sentiment and open and amiable disposition toward the 
country they visit; but, in the natural condition of 
things, opportunities for meeting its more quiet and re- 



A GLIMPSE OF PARIS SOCIAL LIFE 33 

fined people familiarly in a social way are rare. I do 
not speak now of the nobles adverted to above who 
cultivate the very rich foreigners with ardor, and es- 
pecially run after those who have rich daughters to 
marry, with a zeal that is often repulsive. 

No, I fancy the self-made exiles in the interest of 
art, the languages, and general improvement often think 
they have met with a rebuff to the friendly interest they 
were beginning to extend, and that they close up their 
cliques and clans with regret rather than disdain. They 
would generally be glad of the opportunities they are 
supposed to scorn or neglect. They are a sort of elite^ 
a chosen class, even after ample allowance is made for 
the many ridiculous specimens among them, and their 
compeers of another race might well find their account 
in the acquaintance. Thus it is, but it is natural. The 
new-comers are without family connections in the coun- 
try ; they are supposed to be merely birds of passage; 
very little is known of them or their country, and the 
journals have a flippant habit of putting them in the 
worst light; and they can generally convey their ex- 
pressions of good will only in a halting, uncertain tongue, 
which cannot be too interesting to hear. Add the great 
difference of types and the vast divergence of ideals and 
the thing is well accounted for. 

It would be a real boon, in the interest of general 
culture and the two great republics, if some easy way 
were open for Americans — not millionaires with, 
daughters to marry to impoverished titles, but people 
of moderate fortune and enlightened aspirations — to 
enter into pleasant relations with the corresponding 
class in France during their years of travel-sojourn 
there. But having set it forth, I shall by no means 
3 



34 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

be so daring — it is a common method with reformers — 
as to offer a suggestion as to how it can best be brought 
about. 

What is even more mysterious, and even more dif- 
ficult to penetrate into, were one so disposed, is the 
lower middle-class, the bon bourgeois population of the 
ordinary every-day sort. Forcible accident alone could 
precipitate one understandingly into that closed milieu^ 
abounding in prejudices, narrow with limitations, lack- 
ing in imagination like lower middle-classes everywhere, 
yet holding too the germ of all that is most favorable 
and constituting the essence, the bone and sinew of 
France. A considerable part of this class, even indi- 
viduals in such comfortable circumstances as would put 
them on a far higher plane in the United States, here 
seem to live scarce more than a semi-peasant existence. 
Their parlor is a sacred apartment only to be entered 
on exceptional occasions, and they pass their lives 
shabbily in poor minor rooms. The women retire to 
bed not very long after dark, the husband and father 
goes out to pass his evening at the cafe. 

In going about Paris, it repeatedly happened to us to 
see whole blocks of most respectable-looking houses 
with only a single light or two in them, high or low. 
We used to wager, in jest, that the light was some 
American family's, and that they probably had some- 
thing good to read, or even, daring supposition! friends 
in to spend the evening with them. There are un- 
doubtedly thousands of families in Paris, who, for all 
its movement, live in a complete dulness not exceeded 
by any part of the provinces. In this sense it is also 
fair to say there are thousands of families in the prov- 
inces who live just like people in Paris. 



A GLIMPSE OF PARIS SOCIAL LIFE 35 

Let lis come now again to French women. There 
are two very strongly contrasted opinions extant on 
French women. There is, first, the opinion of them so 
largely promulgated by the novelists of their own 
nation, which writers are pretty well understood to 
disport themselves in a realm of pure fancy. 

They deal with the dissolute married woman because 
the doings of the honest married woman are not exciting 
enough. It is a kind of convention in French novels 
that the women should be bad, just as it is a convention 
that there should be an irascible, gouty old guardian 
or uncle in the old English comedies, and a Pantalone, 
Arlecchino, and Columbina in the comedies of Goldoni. 

This produces an unfortunate impression abroad, for 
which the writers alone are responsible. Even in Bour- 
get and Maupassant, the two strongest of the moderns, 
who profess to devote themselves to truth with especial 
zeal, there is no evidence of a change in this practice. 
One has just been studying out whether a woman can 
love two men at the same time, and the other whether 
a man can love two women at the same time. The 
problem has a very sage, profound air, but a la bonne 
heure! it is a comparatively easy one. Why not give 
us a psychology of Solomon, who found he could love 
seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines? 

On the other hand, there is the opinion, frequently 
heard among those who pride themselves on having 
gone below the surface, and expressed somewhat as fol- 
lows: "Oh, the French men, the men! — but the women 
they are saints." For this way of thinking see 
"Tony," the novel by that strong and entertaining 
writer, Th. Bentzon, or Madame Blanc. The heroine 
is so out of conceit with all her countrymen that she is 



^6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

fairly driven to marry an American for his entire unlike- 
ness to them in the moral way. She likes him for one 
thing, because he never pays her compliments, but I 
must say this charming person is so worthy of compli- 
ments that it seems proof of apathy on his part rather 
than merit. Listen to what a sv/eet, young French girl 
can be even in her teens. 

" I shall have there," says one of the suitors for her 
hand, " a wife who, at seventeen, might serve as a model 
both in good sense and distinction to the whole swarm 
of ancient idiots with whom Paris abounds. She is of 
the most perfect naturalness, and yet, with all that, 
can wear at times the air of a dear little matron." 

In reality there cannot be so great a difference be- 
tween civilized men and women as the more favorable, 
second opinion would imply. We must certainly accord 
either more merit to the male side or less of it to the 
female side. 

The convent system of education still prevails in 
France for young women of the superior classes. The 
attractive Convent of the Sacred Heart, mother house of 
the order, was near us. It covers an interminably long 
block of ground on the Boulevard des Invalides. Very 
high walls shut in a large garden adorned with clipped 
alleys, and the school building is an old chateau, corre- 
sponding to that of the Prince de Leon, the Marquis 
de Chambrun, and others in the neighborhood. 

I looked down the clipped alleys one day to where 
some of the children were playing, at the further end ; 
they wore a simple, quiet uniform and several had prize 
ribbons for good conduct across their breasts. A white- 
capped sister, confident in the complete seclusion, frisked 
and ran about with them as gayly as one of themselves. 



A GLIMPSE OF PARIS SOCIAL LIFE 37 

A very pleasant sight it was. It all is very smooth, 
calm, and pretty to look at, this convent education. If 
it did not so much exalt the m-ts d' agreement — the ac- 
complishments or arts of pleasing — at the expense of 
thorough mental training, I think I should prefer it to 
any other. As if any other form of pleasing could 
equal a lively intelligence and a clear head. At any 
rate, from this and similar schools at present issue 
those types of gentle distinction and sweetness that 
realize, for a while at least, the angelic mediaeval pattern. 
Hence come forth those scions of ancient names that 
set the standards for female conduct — and the fashions 
for female wear — in circles lower down. 

Add to this cloister education that many French wo- 
men are married in a way that leaves them little choice 
but to accept the lot that befalls them. Furthermore, 
women, the illogical sex, may more comfortably occupy 
an illogical position than men. But all is not yet enough 
to establish the position claimed. There is a certain 
amount of cynicism in accepting with so passable a 
grace disorders of conduct and a condition of things 
which should be so repugnant to them. There is no 
evidence of any general disturbance of mind, no violent 
explosion of protest on the part of French women. On 
the contrary, do they not go on marrying the objec- 
tionable men and raising up sons who follow in the 
same way ? Women must in the main have a large share 
of sympathy in the leading ideas and practices of their 
time. I think it will be found that the French women, 
like the French men, generally estimate that whatever 
is in France is about right. 

The same reasoning must be applied everywhere. 
To take an instance in our own homes, many of the 



3,8 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

women in our Southern States, who love their sons, 
have yet, under the pressure of an absurd public opinion, 
brought them up, or suffered them to be brought up, 
over-quarrelsome, touchy, and belligerent, and have 
seen them almost with equanimity sacrifice their lives in 
the pettiest dispute with a neighbor on a fancied point 
of honor. 

In one respect the French woman shares the ideas of 
her mankind with a painful heroism that is almost more 
devoted than his own. I refer to the military conscrip- 
tion. After the new law, there is no escape for anybody : 
every young man must give a full three years of his 
life to service in the army. He takes three years from 
his useful work, his profession, his prospects in life, for 
the mere purpose of policing the frontier, as it were. 
And when one thinks that there are Americans who can 
scarcely get the time to vote, and who can by no means 
get the few days in the year that, if all combined, 
might rescue our communities from corrupt domination 
and give them honest, good government! But that is 
not the point: it is a serious thing in France when the 
country is in danger, and no French woman, any more 
than the French man, shows the slightest trace of re- 
pining at the grievous sacrifice its safety entails. 

Apropos of the novelists mentioned, one can hardly 
see where the plentiful openings for misconduct come 
in. The social system is still very strict. Madame 
Adam, of the New Review^ writing of American girls 
abroad, finds them, as she says, " much freer before 
marriage and much tamer after marriage than would be 
to the liking of French women." But I fancy a good 
many American women would not be too content even 
with the amount of married freedom here allowed. 



A GLIMPSE OF PARIS SOCIAL LIFE 39 

At a French social entertainment tlie women constant- 
ly tend to separate into groups or gather in a central 
bevy of beauty, while the men, in like manner, idle in 
the doorway or stroll in the corridors. It seemed hardly 
expected that they should see much of each other, even 
at a great crush, except in a formal way. There were 
not chairs enough for all, and those there were were likely 
to be reclaimed by women, if a man happened to drop 
down in one of them beside some woman with sociable 
intent. He had no resource but to stand before her 
a little as she sat on a low divan, in that temporary 
constrained attitude in which no rational intercourse is 
possible, and then go away and lounge again in his door- 
way. Any marked attention was uncomfortably con- 
spicuous; so that it almost seemed as if there were, both 
on these occasions and in life generally, about such a 
drawing apart of the sexes as takes place in some 
peculiar religious bodies where such separation is a 
prescribed form. Where and when, then, do the open- 
ings so easily occur for the plentiful escapades the 
novelists delight to describe? There is little or nothing 
evident of that easy mingling and thorough fusion, 
that rational converse and mild flirtation which soften 
manners, enable the sexes to learn each other well, and 
must be esteemed one of the leading charms in Ameri- 
can social intercourse. 

I chanced to touch upon this point with a foreign 
friend, one night, at a jolly dinner at Notta's restau- 
rant, Boulevard Poissoniere. 

" Oh, that is only part of the froideur, the stiff formal- 
ity of the house," he replied, acquainted with the place 
where I had last been. " It spreads over their guests. 
In smaller circles, in reunions of fifty or so, you will 



40 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

find plenty of life, plenty of freedom, none of that sort 
of thing. Don't you want to see what a genuine French 
family is like? Then come and see us next Thursday 
at nine o'clock. A few friends; quite without cere- 
mony." 

On the appointed evening I found my way to a hand- 
some little apartment, a fourth floor on one of the 
quieter and best-esteemed boulevards. The company 
were people of education and standing, many of them 
more or less identified with books. Not to make a long 
story, there was, in spite of the disclaimer of my host, 
the same gravitating apart of the sexes, the same inev- 
itable separation, as it were, as of oil and water. Had 
he really understood the point I made ? I doubted it. 

For one thing, we played the game of Consequences. 
It is the same thing in English. Monsieur So-and-so. 
Madame or Mademoiselle So-and-so. They met at — 
so-and-so. He said . She said . The con- 
sequence was — so-and-so. It must be said there was 
a great freedom of meaning in the framing of some 
of these consequences. Then there was Bouts Rhne's : 
we call it Rhyming Crambo, and some excellent rhymes 
and bright little poems were made. An adjournment 
was taken to the supper-room, the men here briefly giv- 
ing their arms to the ladies. On their return, the ladies 
early re-formed their phalanx or hollow square, its 
centre the hostess, who brought forth some embroidery 
she was making to show to them. 

I fear these small indications are hardly worth men- 
tioning, and will not necessarily establish that the man- 
ners and customs of my own country are the best. 

Madame Henri Greville, the novelist, one of the few 
French women who has seen the United States well, 



A GLIMPSE OF PARIS SOCIAL LIFE 4I 

Will tell you, for instance, that the Americans have too 
many acquaintances and too few friends. I wonder if 
this be really so, or shall I try to defend it on the score 
of a larger American conception of hospitality and gen- 
eral good will ? 

Madame Greville's drawing-room was one of the most 
comfortable of those of the literary class in Paris. The 
street that contained it was an original choice, the busy 
Rue Blanche in the most bustling part of the great city. 
Its hostess talked with animation, told many an amus- 
ing story, and, rarest of accomplishments, also listened 
well. To Men ecouter and Men repondre have never yet 
ceased to, have their charm since La Rochefoucauld 
called them the two greatest perfections of conversa- 
tion. 

I went sometimes also to the day of a literary hostess 
of another sort. Too hardly tried perhaps by the wor- 
ries of her labor, she was distrait and vague to all her 
guests. There was not always a fire and the lights 
were not accustomed to be lit at the closing in of the 
short, murky Paris winter day, just at the time when 
the most people came. They were painfully relieved 
in black against the glaring windows except as wholly 
lost in the dark. One dame, not a little known to fame, 
used to wear in addition a short close veil, never raised 
by any possibility. To talk with her was like inter- 
viewing a materialized spirit, and only partly material- 
lized at that. 

Literary work had at the time become a sort of mode 
among certain fashionable or at least titled women. 
And I believe it was not all a mode either. All sorts 
of minor evils as well have fallen upon France in these 
late years since the war. The phylloxera has killed off 



42 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the vineyards, and American competition has ruined 
the market for cattle and farm products. Many large 
estates have become unproductive, and there were 
grand dames who were quite willing enough to supple- 
ment their resources by returns from their literary labor, 
were these little or much. I was occasionally filled 
with admiration at some excellent piece of work done 
by persons of this kind, little recognized, nor ever likely 
to be recognized under the hard conditions of the 
literary trade. They looked on with envy at those 
regularly in the guild and who possessed as they thought 
the kind of acquaintance to forward them, and the 
potent secret of reclame^ or self-advertising. 

Madame Adam, who wrote of American manners, was 
herself one of those who entertained in a natural and 
easy way. She was aided in her hospitality by abundant 
means. As a hostess there are none of the terrors 
about her which might be feared from the formidable 
political articles in \\^x Revue. She has a bright, charm- 
ing, new hotel at the corner of the Boulevard Male- 
sherbes and a little street named after herself, Rue Juli- 
ette Laimber. 

In the country she is pleasanter yet. I shall never 
forget a unique fete we saw, later on, at her country 
place, " the Abbaye" of Gif, an hour or so out of town, 
by the line of Sceaux. She gives a garden party there 
with new, original features every summer. It was 
a costumed fete. The dress of peasant or well-to-do 
farmer was prescribed. We wore our costumes openly 
from the station, in our special train. A collection 
of large breaks and farm-wains, decked with boughs, 
received the company. Madame Adam was at her gate, 
dressed like a country bourgeois of a hundred years ago. 



A GLIMPSE OF PARIS SOCIAL LIFE 43 

Her white cap and fichu gave her a decided Marie An- 
toinette look. The good bourgeoise^ the patronne^ went 
on in the van crying gayly, '''' Allons boire ! allons boire !'' 
Let us drink! and the motley company trooped in her 
wake. Cider was set forth in foaming pitchers with all 
other appropriate beverages. 

Later a mdt-de-cocagne and other rural sports were 
inaugurated and there was dancing on the grass. Then 
at dark a ruined abbey in the grounds, which gives its 
name to the property, was illuminated with colored 
lights. A ghost too appeared there, and the young 
Prince Karageorgewitch, the same whose portrait Marie 
Bashkirtseff painted, sang in a sympathetic tenor voice 
an ode especially composed by Frangois Coppee. You 
had celebrities on all sides, from Pierre Loti — as Pecheur 
d'Islande — ^to the irrepressible Jean Aicard, the Pro- 
vengale poet, as a Parisian voyou or hoodlum ; from 
the pretty Mile. Jean Hugo, about to marry young 
Daudet, to the bellicose Marquis de Mores. 

All were unbent, all full of frisking jollity and en- 
train. A prodigiously oriental King and Queen of An- 
nam arrived upon the scene and paid their respects to 
the hostess with profound prostrations, after the manner 
of the East. She, not to be outdone, knelt down also, 
and with the gayety of a girl of sixteen, returned them 
obeisance for obeisance, knocking her head upon the 
ground. 

That day the great destinies of nations were allowed 
to slumber. The making of formidable political articles 
in the New Review by that merry person would never 
one instant have been credited. 



CHAPTER IV 

A PARIS EXPOSITION IN DISHABILLE 

That the Exposition was near to us was not due to 
collusion on either side. The Exposition certainly did 
not establish itself at the Chanlp de Mars on our account, 
because its elaborate constructions were going on there 
long before we came. On the other hand, I at least, 
after experiencing pretty thoroughly two of those very 
great, bustling, overcrowded affairs, considered myself 
Exposition-proof. 

But it did not prove possible, on the whole, to keep 
our attention withdrawn from this one. In the first 
place the newspapers were full of it, as they were full 
too of everything connected with the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury, which was certainly a charming period in many 
ways and which was to be profusely commemorated in 
the great exhibition. They adopted, for instance, the 
practice of giving us every day, in our modern '89, a 
summary of the news of the corresponding day in the 
great '89, the year of the French Revolution. Details 
of art and decoration and social life came out, as 
well as politics and everlasting principles of liberty. 
The Matin^ quoting from some old book of the time, 
over-sanguine perhaps, even affected to find the origin 
of that venerable expression " poor but honest par- 
ents. " " Cette jeune fille^ nee de parents honnetes mais pau- 
vres,'* said the old romancer, and this was declared 

44 



A PARIS EXPOSITION IN DISHABILLE 45 

to be the centennial anniversary of the time -honored 
"chestnut." 

The people were full of it, the air was full of it. The 
Exposition was the pet of the whole nation. France, 
having been so long greatly humiliated, was now to 
score a triumph over her adversaries and detractors. 
She was to do something in which she could excel, 
something she could do better than anybody else and 
thus put in evidence her return to the front rank of 
nations and make a peaceful counterpoise to the dis- 
asters of 1870. This mixed a little touch of pathos and 
sentiment well deserving of sympathy amid the clamor 
of the enterprise. Then, during all the fall and winter, 
some of the heavy material for it was always passing 
down our avenue, hauled by long, string-teams of 
ponderous Norman horses. Finally one night, when 
I came home late, in our otherwise quiet and deserted 
street, I saw a procession of large trees going by on 
wheels, nodding mysteriously with their leafless branches 
toward the Exposition where they were going to be set 
up. It was like Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane. If 
Birnam Wood had indeed come to Dunsinane, then it 
seemed time to throw off one's apathy and recognize 
this great event so irresistibly and ponderously forced 
upon us. 

There was some doubt too whether it would ever take 
place, for these were the days of Boulanger supremacy; 
and it was more than a mere doubt whether that eminent 
charlatan might not any day make himself Dictator 
and precipitate the country upon Germany in a war of 
revenge which would forever put an end to any such 
festal projects. I made interest, therefore, to get ad- 
mitted to the grounds, in the latter days of January, 



4.6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

and saw it in its unformed condition. It was not to 
open till the usual period in May. 

As I passed the dingy, serious fagade of Louis XV. 's 
old military school, there came pouring out of its bar- 
rack-gates regiment after regiment of heavy cuirassiers, 
in brass helmets, about the same costume they wore at 
Waterloo. The officers rode Thor-like in their midst 
draped in cloaks, and the colors nodded this way and 
that, like some sagacious sort of fetiches. Behind them, 
in dress familiar since Sebastopol and Solferino, came 
drumming long regiments of infantry. All looked very 
deft, swift, and business-like, and calculated to give food 
for reflection to any German mind that might think they 
had learned nothing since the Downfall of 1870. They 
were going off to drill elsewhere, their parade-ground 
having been taken from them by the Exposition. It 
was for the same reason that we had the troops from 
the Rue de Babylone so often going through their fac- 
ings under our own windows. 

None but a military nation in truth could give this 
peculiar kind of an Exposition, so conveniently situated 
from all points of access; for no other could retain in 
the very heart of its capital so spacious a tract, which 
has its reason for being only in the needs of military 
manoeuvres. One end of it reaches the Seine and is 
connected by the broad quay with another parade- 
ground, the Esplanade des Invalides, while the Bridge 
of Jena connects it with the park of the Trocadero 
across the river. It is an uneasy sod that lies upon 
this Champ de Mars. It has been torn up and re- 
modelled in the most wholesale manner for each of 
these two last great expositions, and does not get re- 
stored to its normal condition for years afterward. The 



A PARIS EXPOSITION IN DISHABILLE 47 

nation plays at industrial games there about as the 
soldiers play at making rifle-pits and bastions in the ex- 
ercise grounds reserved for their use. 

I had the Exposition all to myself, and the changing 
my mind about it proved the occasion of a very original 
and pleasant experience. I could not but reflect too 
upon the possibly unique position reserved for me, in 
case the threatened bombshell of war or civil discord 
should fall and prevent it — it was not at all unlikely 
at the hands of brother Boulanger — and I should be 
about the only spectator of a Universal Exposition de- 
signed for uncounted millions. 

The weather chanced to be mild and half spring-like; 
and a certain idyllic peacefulness prevailed there, in 
spite of all the mammoth enterprises in progress. Here 
the surface had been spaded up for extensive gardens, 
there dug into deep abysses for a lake and fountains 
and dark pits for costly drainage and water-supply 
systems. Lines of fine magnolias stood protected by 
tents of coarse bagging, open to the south. Much of 
the shrubbery had been planted a year before, and was 
in flourishing condition. 

I gossiped with the gardeners about the transplanting 
of Birnam Wood. There seemed to be no limit, with 
modern appliances, to the size of trees that could be 
transplanted. One very bright-eyed, lively old man, 
with leathern skin, assured me that capable men, on these 
government jobs, were paid only the same wages as the 
quite incapable. It was something like seven cents an 
hour. The chiefs of gangs got more, say from eleven 
to fourteen cents an hour, but they were chiefs only in 
virtue of favoritism, and not of superior capacity. The 
inventor of a fine new decorative process complained 



48 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

that the architect, who was using it to a small extent, 
had not put it forward half enough, because he had not 
been sufficiently bribed. Many seemed to find a certain 
comfort in airing their grievances to a stranger. 

The bright-eyed old gardener told me that he had 
learned his trade from a master who was an author ; 
and, what was more, that he himself was an author. 
He stood back a little, upon this, to properly receive 
my admiration. He had written a treatise on horticul- 
ture, he said, and taken it to a publisher, simply de- 
manding a few hundred dollars down and the usual 
royalty, and, apart from this, content to leave to the 
publisher all the other emoluments that might ac- 
crue from the work, no matter how large they might 
be. 

" And what think you was the result, what was the 
action of that publisher?" he asked. — "// ne voidait 
pas.'' He would not. And again he drew back, this 
time to receive my natural expressions of incredulity 
and disgust. 

My astonishment would have been stronger, no doubt, 
if there were not publishers even in America capable 
of acting the same way. 

I had been looking over my friend's shoulder, as he 
talked, noting the great difference in the plan of the 
main building between this Exposition and the last, in 
1878. Whereas, then one vast rectangular edifice had 
contained almost everything in itself, this time a mod- 
erate central structure sent out five great galleries or 
wings projecting far before it. A fine dome crowned 
the centre, — a particularly fine one, — two others the 
twin palaces of the Fine Arts and the Liberal Arts, 
which constituted the grander wings; and^the whole 



A PARIS EXPOSITION IN DISHABILLE 49 

Stood upon a stately terrace with grand flights of steps 
and balustrades. 

These three domes were the salient points of depar- 
ture, always leading the eye up to them. Made of 
elaborate iron framing, they were encased in beautiful 
shining, colored tiles that recalled to me the fine old, 
tile-covered Spanish domes I had admired in Mexico. 
All round the front of the main palace, the Palace of 
Diverse Groups, ran a two-story arcade, abutting against 
the Gallery Rapp and the Gallery Desaix. They were 
putting upon it a broad belt of Renaissance frieze, of 
the richest and most original description. It was fretted 
in high relief, like a tossing foam, with leafage, scrolls, 
and cherubim much more than life-size, supporting es- 
cutcheons. The material was simply plaster, surfaced 
to stand the six months' exposure to the summer season, 
and given a general tone of old ivory. The borders 
and shields were being picked out with colors. A small 
portion only was complete, and this portion, where 
sculpture and mosaic, gold and colors mingled, was like 
a dashing, lovely sketch, with all the charm of creation 
and the fresh idea strong upon it. You would have 
liked to arrest it there and never let it go ahead another 
step, for fear of the tameness that might fall upon so 
perfect a thing — as indeed it did fall upon it — with 
over-completion. 

It is naturally a point of pride with each new univer- 
sal Exposition to have a fresh plan of its own ; yet look- 
ing back, by the comparative method, at the whole list 
since the Paris Exposition of '67, I cannot say that I 
find anything that seems to me equal in symmetry and 
logic to the great ellipse adopted for the chief palace 
that year. This elliptical palace, by means of its con- 
4 



50 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

centric as well as converging aisles, placed the nations 
in the segments side by side, and not only that but the 
corresponding classes of goods in each nation were side 
by side. In the present case there were transitions in 
passing from one country to another, as you know, for 
all the world saw it later, and an interruption of con- 
tinuity in inspecting the goods that might interfere with 
the desirable clearness of comparison. It was a highly 
condensed method of travelling, and to cross a fine 
garden or stroll in beautiful corridors awhile, in going, 
say from Great Britain to Italy, should be no great 
matter. Still, when you have numerous realms of the 
universe to visit in a day, everything counts. 

In some respects I would have liked to stop the Ex- 
position as a whole and never let it advance a step 
farther. It too was a glorious sketch, broad, simple, 
plucky, full of color and full of so many possibilities 
that it was alarming to think how they might be disap- 
pointed. I was admitted to an Exposition in dishabille, 
as one might say, but a charming dishabille. It was 
like — since Eighteenth Century things are in vogue — as- 
sisting at the petit lever of a grande dame of that epoch. 
She admitted a select few, her coiffeur, her music- 
master, her amanuensis, and perhaps a poet or two, 
while she was dressing, and she was only the more 
charming at that favored moment for not being yet ar- 
rayed in the full war-paint and feathers of conquest. 

I had rather expected to have to piece out the Ex- 
position myself at this early stage, and construct the 
complete impression, much as an anthropologist con- 
structs a mastodon from a rib and a few teeth or so, 
found in a swamp. But nothing of the kind : it was 
already a domain with a complete character of its 



A PARIS EXPOSITION IN DISHABILLE 5 1 

own; it was a vast, stretch of fairy-like palaces. The 
scaffoldings were still up in multifarious complexity, 
but this did not hide them. " The earth hath bubbles 
as the water hath," I muttered, and surely the quotation 
was nowhere ever better justified. The materials were 
chiefly iron, glass, terra-cotta, and glazed tiles. The 
iron was painted of a pleasing soft blue, instead of the 
conventional brown or black, the terra-cotta was pink; 
the tiles were colored or gilded; the sky showed deli- 
cately azure through the glass; and a bold grandiose 
sculpture began to embellish the whole. The con- 
struction, exceedingly light and graceful, was yet free 
from ephemeralness, or any look of pasteboard and 
trumpery makeshift. There was no need of bunting, of 
drapery or "exhibits," to cover up rude framing or un- 
sightliness. Everything was beautifully finished, com- 
plete, perfect in itself. " If the Exposition never did 
more than give us these lovely buildings," I said, " with- 
out putting a thing in them, it would still be worthy to 
draw the usual pilgrims from all the ends of the earth 
to see it." 

It had gone nearer than any other to finding a new 
thing under the sun, in the Eiffel Tower. This was 
the clou^ the master-achievement, the great distinctive 
novelty of the affair. Its very pedestal soared high 
above all the other architectural ascents of men. The 
tower of Babel must have been but the merest joke to 
it, and our Washington obelisk, which we Americans de- 
servedly estimate a tower of prodigious altitude, is but 
half its height. We may comfort our patriotism, how- 
ever, with the recollection that it is the next highest 
thing in the world. 

From the Trocadero on the opposite slope, whence 



52 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the whole gay parterre was spread out before you, the 
Eiffel Tower looked, as it did too in all the colored 
lithographs and newspaper illustrations of it so profusely 
spread about, like a Brobdingnagian candlestick, put 
down in the Land of Liliput. But near at hand you 
had no desire at all to smile at it, you could not avoid 
the impression it gave of real sublimity. The airy 
crocheting of its iron beams a. foot in diameter, the 
endless congeries of its braces, tie-rods, struts, and 
girders fell at last into great bundles of interwoven 
strands resembling a ship's cordage, with tops and 
cross-trees in the midst, coming dark with a noble effect 
against the sky. Tribes of pigmy workmen in baggy 
corduroy trousers, crimson sashes and crimson caps zig- 
zagged up interminable staircases among the girders, 
like the angels of Jacob's ladder. They were no angels 
at all, as the^ very embarrassing strikes they were con- 
tinually contriving against Monsieur Eiffel, their engi- 
neer, plainly showed, yet never was a closer connection 
than this between the earth and sky. 

It was to have 'its uses even in a scientific way. 
Meteorologic experiments were to be conducted under 
yet more favorable conditions than on the mountain 
slopes. The lower strata of the atmosphere, the forma- 
tion of rain, fog, mist, and dew, variations in humidity 
and electric tension were to be studied there, with 
registering instruments at various heights capable of 
being simultaneously consulted. Even the astronomers 
were to find their profit in the clearer air about its top. 

Up on the dizzy height of the second platform was a 
row of pavilions, each a great hall in itself, and aside of 
the platform was at least as long as the longest city 
block. The eye was continually baffled and returned in 



A PARIS EXPOSITION IN DISHABILLE 53 

wonderment from these vast dimensions. And be it ob- 
served that I speak of a time when it lacked yet two 
hundred feet of the total one thousand it had to attain. 
It stood four-square across the two main avenues of 
circulation, and the general views were the grandest 
from beneath its arches, a hundred and thirty feet in 
height. These arches in no way impeded any part of 
the vision ; it was rather as if they belonged to nature, 
as if they were a proper part of the blue heaven they 
framed in, above the strangely singular prospect. 

As I wandered on, bizarre details began to invite the 
attention, like the odd things one sees in a dream and 
that seem only natural there. 

Here and there a monumental stork sat upon the 
angle of an unfinished dome, precursor of the plentiful 
sculpture to follow. I went into a workshop in the lofty 
nave of the Palace of Fine Arts, and was amazed to see 
there the amazing lightness of this temporary sculpture 
which seemed so substantial, and the great ingenuity 
with which it was put together. The heads, hands, 
claws, and the like were cast, but the chief portion of 
the huge bodies was simply built up on iron framework, 
joined in sections. This was helped out of by bits 
of wood and bent wands, fashioned yet closer to the 
desired modelling, and then wire netting was stretched 
over the whole to hold the plaster. Men with large 
bowls dashed on handfuls of the plaster and completed 
the work, much as a lath-and-plaster partition is made. 
The plaster being tinted with yellow ochre, and the sur- 
face left rough-cast, at a little distance the precise 
effect of boldly finished terra-cotta was attained. The 
wings of some of the figures must have been ten feet 
high. There was no cheapness of design at least in 



54 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

this plaster sculpture ; it was the work of the very best 
talents of the day and later played a notable part in 
giving the fagades their grand appearance. Meantime 
I kept running across portions of it in a very incongru- 
ous state of incompleteness. A procession all of co- 
lossal legs, for instance, marched away in vigorous 
lock-step. Elsewhere the bust of a sturdy young Genius 
of Photography — she had a camera under her arm, and, 
an amateur myself, I felt especially interested in her 
case — looked on with a pertly critical air, as I thought, 
at some workmen completing the lower part of her 
body near by. 

The first sentiment excited, on entering the great, as 
yet unfurnished, buildings, was a keen admiration for 
the beauty of simplicity. Who will convert us, espe- 
cially in America, where we so much need it, to the de- 
lightful charm of this most sweet and worthy form of 
attractiveness ? Who will effectively convince us that 
a smooth largeness, plainness, and temperance in the 
matter of ornament is the chief condition, in every 
domain of decoration, of noble, satisfying, long-endur- 
ing effect? The multiplicity of detail, either within or 
without, had not yet sprung up. The neat, smooth 
stretches of untrodden flooring were restful and grateful 
to the eye. There was a fragrant smell of new pine in 
the air. The imposing heights, the plenteous breadths, 
the long vistas were undisturbed as yet by any of the 
uneasy " exhibits " of the coming bee-hive. In the main, 
only light, graceful screens divided the nations from 
one another and bounded the sections which were soon 
to be heaped with the goods of all creation. The 
United States had been given a fine tabula i-asa which 
contained over three thousand square metres. They 



A PARIS EXPOSITION IN DISHABILLE 55 

said we had more space allotted us than any other na- 
tion but Great Britain and Belgium, and in the fine arts 
department more space than any other nation. There 
was matter for patriotic pride in this, but it seemed as 
if it were going to be difficult to fill it properly with the 
economical appropriation of a quarter of a million dol- 
lars our Government had voted, whereas diminutive 
Mexico alone had a whole million. 

It was apparent that the republics, of all kinds, were 
getting special consideration from their sister French 
republic. And this was with good reason, at a celebra- 
tion peculiarly intended to commemorate the centenary 
of immortal '89 and the overthrow of monarchy. By 
some indeed it was deemed a piece of brazen imperti- 
nence and a complete want of logic to invite the mon- 
archical nations to participate in a show to such an 
end. But Jules Ferry met the objection in this way. 

"I make a distinction," said he, "between the prin- 
ciples of '89 and those of '93, which resulted in the 
Reign of Terror. The liberal principles of '89 have 
found general acceptance in the lapse of a century and 
are those that now actually prevail in all the constitu- 
tional governments of Europe. I see no reason, there- 
fore, why the monarchical government should not ac- 
cept — and the more especially since the success of the 
Exposition is a guarantee of peace." 

So spoke the astute minister, but the monarchies did 
not accept, all the same. The Moslem despotisms of 
the Orient, it is true, did not suffer themselves to be 
disturbed by fine-drawn scruples, but in Europe only 
the comparatively small kingdoms of Norway, Greece, 
and Servia agreed to any official representation. Not 
that the Exposition suffered, as we know, from such 



56 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

ostensible neglect. Its success rested as usual with the 
people of the various countries, who found their com- 
mercial interes tin it. Private committees were organ- 
ized, and the rulers, perfectly willing to assist, once 
their sentimental objection sufficiently insisted uporj, 
voted them handsome subsidies to be employed pretty 
much in the usual way. In Russia, Austria, Italy, the 
Low Countries, and Great Britain, where the government 
would aid neither directly nor indirectly, the private in- 
itiative took hold with such vigor and efficiency as to 
insure the most admirable results. 

As boulders are scattered about the country, which, 
entirely disconnected from the ordinary formation, we 
know to have been stranded there in former geologic 
epochs, so numerous important buildings are found in 
Paris which remain to her as a heritage from former 
Expositions. She has a way of having something tangi- 
ble on the ground to show for her time and money after 
each of them. Of such are the Palais de I'lndustrie, 
scene of the annual Salon, the Pavilion de Paris along- 
side it, where the chic Black and White Exhibition was 
going on, and the remarkable palace with curved wide- 
spreading wings that crowns the Trocadero. And now 
it was rumored that — as the event proved — the grand 
bright hall called the Palace of Machines was to be left 
over as a riding-school for the Military Academy. 

Palace of Machines certainly has a finer round than 
the name Machinery Hall, that we should have been 
obliged to give it, and calling it their palace seemed to 
suggest a conscious life in the machines, as if they were 
a mammoth race of intelligent genii that were soon 
coming to inhabit it. One almost seemed to breathe 
freer in this vast edifice than outside it, the sense of air 



A PARIS EXPOSITION IN DISHABILLE 57 

and space being even heightened by the slight bound- 
aries and curtailment. It was some fourteen hundred 
feet long by nearly four hundred feet wide, and was 
roofed over by a few pivot trusses of noble sweep sus- 
taining acres upon acres of glass-work. Science and 
beauty were rarely combined in these pivot trusses. For 
all their enormous weight, each rested only upon so 
small a point that they occupied practically no space at 
all on the ground. The palace was practically poised 
in the air. The tall blocks of Paris houses round about 
looked in through its glass sides strangely dwarfed. 
Men, appearing of about the size of flies, were suspended 
on platforms painting its far-away ridge-pole. 

Rows of stout iron supports were being set up, to 
sustain the expected congeries of shafts and belting. 
Upon the top of these supports was to run an elevated 
railway to furnish sight-seers a continuous view. The 
machines would soon be humming and clattering there 
— and the great sweep and noble emptiness would be at 
an end. The Palace of Fine Arts itself, a magnified 
piece of jewelry in gold and opal, a thing of delicious 
grace, could not compensate for the vanished charm of 
that grand simplicity. I was perverse enough to like 
it then far better than ever again. 



CHAPTER V 

• HOUSES AND GARDENS IN THE SUBURBS OF PARIS 

After our hardships of the winter, with the approach 
of springtime the desire for something freer and nearer 
the ground than the city apartment, something warmer 
and pleasanter than gloomy Paris, took possession of 
us. Our early ideal of living a country life revived with 
great force. In obedience to this feeling I soon started 
out on an extensive exploration of the suburbs of Paris, 
making a house with a garden the object. 

Beginning first on the railway northward, I found the 
principal place on that line, royal St. Denis, entirely out 
of the question. It is merely a most grimy manufactur- 
ing quarter; the tombs of the kings of France are 
smudged with foundry soot, the chimes of the fine old 
abbey keep up a losing competition with factory-bells 
and steam-whistles. One might go farther on, of course. 
At Ecouen, for instance, a quiet little hamlet, once the 
site of the school of Frere, I saw a fine large house, — 
so large we should have been wholly swallowed up in 
it, — and partly furnished at that, for twelve hundred 
francs a year. Better still, in the same grounds was a 
pretty pavilion for no more than four hundred francs. 
There was a chance of its being vacant in July, when a 
young girl, who lived there with her father, a retired 
officer, had completed her studies at the school, into 
which the old chateau on the hill above has been turned 

58 



HOUSES AND GARDENS IN SUBURBS OF PARIS 59 

for daughters of members of the Legion of Honor; but 
we never went back to see. 

Next in order I turned southward. That day I ex- 
plored Bourg-la-Reine, and walked thence over to Sceaux 
and Fontenay-aux-Roses. It was in a driving snow- 
storm, for I had not waited for winter to fully end. 
The rolling country, its bold fort of Chatillon frowning 
down over it, looked bleak enough under that aspect, 
and even the more luxurious villas stiff and conventional, 
as villas under the wing of a great city are apt to look. 
On the Grande Rue at Bourg-la-Reine, not far from an 
old hunting-lodge of Henri IV., now a deaf-mute school, 
were a small first-story apartment and a small house, 
both with gardens: the latter at six hundred and fifty 
francs, the former at four hundred and fifty. Here I 
first discovered a characteristic and very unpleasant 
feature of French suburban gardens. In the first case, 
a small plot of ground was allotted each tenant, in a 
general inclosure, much as gardens are allotted to chil- 
dren, ^'to call their own;" in the second, the ground 
was separated from that of the neighbors only by a 
slight lattice barrier about three feet high : so that in 
neither case was there any privacy whatever. The 
practice may be adopted because of limited amount of 
sun; the shadows cast by really effectual walls would 
take too much away from the scant space open to 
cultivation at best. It may be an enforced choice of 
evils; but at any rate, in the more modest Parisian 
suburban dwellings one is not chez soi^ not in his own 
house. At Sceaux, where vestiges of great Colbert 
and the Duchess of Maine still linger, a second-story 
apartment, all in Louis XVI. white, high, panelled 
wainscoting, a Grinling Gibbons sort of carving, the 



6o A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

rooms large and fine, and all the windows south, and 
looking upon a slope which dropped rapidly to the 
valley, had no small attraction. All things considered, 
it seemed well worth the eight hundred francs asked for 
it; but there was a pestilential odor in the house, as 
from defective drainage, I went back again with 

S , and it was still there, so it could have been no 

mere accident. The station for this odd little circular 
line of Sceaux is in quite a remote part of Paris, a point 
to be taken into account; for it would be much more 
convenient to be on a line that would bring you into 
the heart of the vast city directly. 

It was still winter in town, but spring was already 
abroad in the country, on the 20th of March, when I 
took the line eastward for Vincennes. At Saint Mande, 
three miles from Paris, where two trains recently col- 
lided, making one of the most dreadful railway accidents 
on record, the small apartment I saw, looking directly 
out into a park, at two minutes from the station and 
one thousand francs rent, was not at all bad. Nor was 
another, at the same price, with two principal bedrooms 
and a servant's room, on the broad, pleasant Avenue 
Victor Hugo. Both had only the usual conventional 
petit jardiiiet belonging to them. In the park of Vin- 
cennes gardeners were comfortably burning stubble, 
sheep were browsing upon the beautifully green new 
grass, military buglers were piping in the copses, and 
soldiers — mere dots and lines on the vast parade-ground 
— were firing at iron targets, which responded, when 
hit, with a sharp ring. It would have been pleasant to 
be near that, but houses did not offer. Joinville-le- 
Pont, again, theatre of picnics and pleasant strolls in 
earlier days, seemed merely shabby. That was a long 



HOUSES AND GARDENS IN SUBURBS OF PARIS 6l 

day's wandering, not fruitful with regard to the object 
in view, but improving as a glimpse of realistic suburban 
life. An omnibus goes from Joinville-le-Pont to Saint 
Maur, but I made the journey on foot instead. The 
region is pervadingly commonplace and bare of interest. 
It appears to have been originally a sort of prairie of 
scrub oak, resembUng those about Chicago. The streets 
and parcels of ground, though but freshly made, are as 
irregular as in Paris. Land was everywhere for sale; 
to each person taking as much as six hundred square 
metres on a certain avenue a yearly commutation ticket 
on the railway was given. I paused to look at some 
little houses in a block, for sale, perhaps to minor clerks 
or superior mechanics. They cost seven thousand 
francs. I compared them with some of the clerks' 
houses, put up by the building societies, which one sees 
around Washington. An enormous pair of Percherons, 
kicked and dragged at by a driver who wore a scarlet 
cap and a blouse of Millet blue, were delivering build- 
ing material in the petty street. They too looked as 
if they belonged in Brobdingnag, and had dropped 
down in Liliput. The houses were built of black and 
red bricks. Their design was better than that of some 
of a more pretentious sort, which had glaring string- 
courses of bright tiles relieved with bosses of rough 
glass, and very crude roofs in green and yellow. Have 
I explained that all houses in the land are built of solid 
materials ? No ? Then I will explain it now, for not to 
do so would be a serious omission. Those that I dealt 
with were chiefly made of rubble-stone plastered on 
the outside and this plaster tinted. Never a one of 
them all was in wood. It astonishes the American eye 
to find that material almost unknown. 



02 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

I got down at last to the river Marne, a large river, 
in freshet just then and running over a half-submerged 
island. It looked as if it might be pleasant in summer 
time. There was an inn offering friture and like hos- 
pitality for canoeists, and there were some small villas, 
red and striped in the Italian fashion, that half made 
you think of the Brenta ; but none of them were vacant. 

I can only touch lightly upon a few typical bits. We 
did not go back again to Versailles. I have known of 
Americans living there pleasantly for a long stretch, 
but then we had brushed off its novelty; and they tell 
you the stately fish-ponds in the park are unhealthy, as 
they are certainly sometimes malodorous. Saint Ger- 
main is, next to Versailles, the suburb of Paris uniting 
the greatest number of fine old traditions. Though I 
have left that scene of the glories of Francis I. and 
home of the exiled Stuarts to the last, we visited it more 
than once, and were on the very point of taking up our 
abode there. 

I got off first at Nanterre, where a rosiere is annually 
crowned, and Rueil, full of traditions of the Bonapartes. 
All the streets there are named after them, and Jose- 
phine and Hortense are buried in the church. The sur- 
face thereabout is divided into verdant strips of market 
garden, and the fort of Mont Valerien looks down upon 
it from its bold hill, as does the fort of Chatillon upon 
Fontenay-aux-Roses. The idea of the crowning of the 
rosiere casts over Nanterre in advance a pleasant glam- 
our which its commonplaceness does not justify. The 
wide, grassy Avenue de Paris at Rueil had a nice rural 
look, but its villas were closed. In general it would 
take all the summer foliage to make those places agree- 
able, and we were looking for a place where we could 



HOUSES AND GARDENS IN SUBURBS OF PARIS 6^ 

live all the year round. There were long streets of 
peculiarly cold, depressing, detached houses, boxlike 
and uniform, that recalled too much the tombs in a 
French cemetery. 

All the country between Rueil and Saint Germain was 
sown with villas and chalets ; an American activity all 
about, a prodigious amount of building going on. Lands 
were advertised for sale in the stations; ancient estates 
and woods were being cut up into building-lots at Cha- 
tou, at Le Vesinet, and even in the historic park of Mal- 
maison. The same things have to be done in much the 
same way the world over. The Seine was in flood, 
turbid and violent, and had submerged the long island 
at Croissy, the bare trees of which projected from it like 
the masts of a foundered vessel. 

Saint Germain is hardly as popular a resort as it once 
was; it is rather the way now to call its situation ex- 
posed, and to pretend that you get a peculiar sort of 
cold there, even in a day's jaunt. Saint Germain is a 
city of sixteen thousand people; Versailles has near 
fifty thousand, Bourg-la-Reine twenty-seven thousand, 
Nanterre five thousand. The things to " do" are to 
walk in the large forest, look down upon the views of 
the valley from the grand terrace, and study the col- 
lections in the ancient chateau of Francis I., which has 
been turned into a museum of national antiquities. 
The museum is most improving, but the chateau itself 
suffers from having been so immensely smartened up 
and put to such practical use. A first vie^y of it and of 
the famous terrace was rather disappointing, yet here 
at last was a place where the house-hunter might take 
heart. The town has a pleasant, ancient, comfortable 
look, and it seemed worth while to search. 



64 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

The American painter Hennessy has for many years 
occupied, at Saint Germain, a quaint, low, old dwelling 
once the property of a morganatic wife of Louis XIV., 
and called for her the Pavilion Montespan. It is ex- 
actly the thing in its way, so charming a picture that it 
tends to make one who has seen it dissatisfied with 
anything less. For the time being, nothing at all com- 
parable offered; what there was was modern, garden- 
less, or in various other ways devoid of interest. A 
rather attractive apartment in the Rue Voltaire was to 
be had for nine hundred francs; one in the Rue de 
Mareuil for one thousand; another in the Rue de la 
Republique, opposite the ancient Hotel de Longueville, 
for eight hundred. These were larger, and none were 
higher than a second story; otherwise, the prices, as 
will be seen, offered no great advantage over those in 
Paris. Our friends knew of an American family who 
had found a charming pavilion, in a garden, for three 
hundred francs; but these opportunities are always 
heard of when just too late; they are never overtaken. 
We coquetted with a two-story house in the Rue de 
Pologne, fair in itself, but the outlook not very good, 
and especially with another in the street descending 
toward the Pavilion Montespan; each, I think, at a 
rent of about twelve hundred francs. That last one 
was in some respects pas mal du tout. I tremble when 
I think how near we were to going there. The pro- 
prietor would not allow the overrank foliage to be 
pruned, and there was but a single room which the sun 
penetrated freely; it must have been damp and chilly 
even in summer, and in winter — br-r-r! 

There was perhaps considerable perversity in all our 
objections; we seemed to find fault with the city for 



HOUSES AND GARDENS IN SUBURBS OF PARIS 65 

not being the country, and with the country for not 
being the city. We considered that if we lived in one 
of the suburban towns we should be forever yielding 
to the temptation to run in to the various attractions 
of Paris, and so fatigue ourselves by trying to do too 
much. Paris itself now began to have some charming 
days, when the flower-venders perfumed the air around 
the Arc de Triomphe, and all the world was going to 
the Bois on foot or on wheels. Nothing was more de- 
lightful than when, in April, the young girls, who wore 
white for a long time apropos of their first communion, 
began to trip, vaporous and sylphlike, about our little 
square of Saint Frangois Xavier. 

The truth was, we had not chanced to hit upon the 
fascinating spot that might have detained us. Then, 
too, more important still, ideas of most radical changes, 
of far-distant, entirely new horizons, had begun to rise 
upon the view. We began to meditate a bold migra- 
tion southward. 
5 



CHAPTER VI 

NEVERS, AND A TUNE ON A FAIENCE VIOLIN 

The long, dark Paris winter had imparted an especial 
value to light and warmth. I started southward, upon 
the agreement that sunshine should be almost our first 
consideration. " Truly the light is sweet, and a pleas- 
ant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun," says 
august Scripture. This motto I blazoned, as it were, on 
my banner. We were to have floods of sunshine. Next 
to that, we were to have a house and garden, and the 
surroundings of the house and garden must be romantic, 
in the mediaeval or other ancient way, as heretofore set 
forth. The nearer Paris all this could be realized, the 
better. 

It will be seen whether I grew over-critical as to 
everything that was presented or whether this was only 
an effect of that alluring imagination which is always 
promising something better just a little further on. At 
all events, the result was an unexpectedly long journey, 
a tour southward through many foreign lands, touching 
at nearly all the typical points that vaunt, with reason, 
their winter climates, and a return to Paris from an 
entirely opposite point of the compass. 

Allowing a sufficient interval for a presumed change 
of climate, the first place I got off at was Nevers, a 
hundred and fifty miles down the P. L. M. Naturally, 
you contract your railroads here, too. The Paris, 

66 



NEVERS, AND A TUNE ON A FAIENCE VIOLIN 67 

Lyons, and Mediterranean is reduced to tiiose few let- 
ters, just as we talk about the cabalistic C, B. & Q. at 
home. Do I catch the remark that no one ever heard 
of anybody's living at Nevers? Do you in surprise ask 
at once what inducements it may offer? The question 
permits me to say that I myself sometimes wonder 
whether the people who have a passion for finding things 
to do that nobody else has ever done, — a passion grown 
quite impossible of gratification, for the rest, in these 
populous times, — are not entirely misguided and in the 
wrong. Possibly conventional people who follow the 
beaten track have once been through all these things 
for themselves, — or somebody else for them, — and know 
there is nothing in them and it is not worth while. 
Perhaps would-be pioneers are only laggards after all. 
An eighteenth-century writer, notable in his day, thinks 
an excellent book might be made, called '' Prejudices 
Justified." So original a person as Goldsmith himself 
tells us bluntly, "Whoever does a new thing does a bad 
thing; whoever says a new thing says a false thing." 

1 may indulge in this line of remark with the greater 
freedom, since we did not go and live at Nevers; nor 
were we ever in the least danger of doing so. 

A travelling acquaintance on the train had assured me 
I should find just what I was in search of, on the Boule- 
vard Victor Hugo. It was till lately the Boulevard 
Saint Gildard, but the saint had been summarily dis- 
possessed for the poet. Everywhere in France, in these 
days, you are certain to find a boulevard or an avenue, 
one of the best, named for Victor Hugo, another for 
Gambetta; and now Carnot, also, is having his turn. 
This was a raw new one, and the stiff little gardens 
had exactly the same lack of privacy I had already found 



68 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

SO unpleasant in suburban Paris. It is a general com- 
plaint, I fear. As the wealthy have too much seclusion 
behind their massive walls, which spoil the prospect, an 
average is got by giving the poor too little. Saint Jean 
— Midsummer's Day — is the great renting-day here, as 
it is also in Touraine and the Pyrenees, Saint Michel 
resuming his sway again further south. It is true, 
there were two first-story apartments in the old part of 
the town, close to the ducal palace and the cathedral, 
that might almost have done. They were thirteen 
hundred francs and six hundred and fifty francs re- 
spectively, and the latter was much in need of repairs; 
but we were not yet arrived at the stage of considering 
mere apartments. 

I looked, among other things, at the chief manufac- 
tory of a characteristic pottery made in the place, and of 
course at the fine old sculptured palace of theGonzagas, 
dukes of Nevers, who first introduced the manufacture 
of this pottery from Italy. Huddled up into a small 
museum, placed in the attic of the palace in a rather 
depreciatory way, were some good specimens of the 
artistic wares of early date. 

It was absolutely the first time I had been in Nevers, 
yet, as I went about, things had a certain familiar, al- 
most homelike air. It was the Faience Violin that 
produced this effect and was really — now that we come 
to it — at the bottom of my getting off there. Do you 
want to hear about the Faience Violin,* in case you 
don't happen to know of it already? 

Writers are not now in search of an original passion 
of human nature, to treat for the first time. All that 
* Lately translated by the author. 



NEVERS, AND A TUNE ON A FAIENCE VIOLIN 69 

was over so long ago that the date is not a matter of 
consequence. If a newish treatment or an unhackneyed 
situation is found nowadays, that is about all that can 
fairly be demanded. Yet it was something very like 
an original passion that M. Champfleury hit upon in his 
bright, gay, amusing book the " Faience Violin." In- 
stead of love, jealousy, patriotism, filial affection or 
friendship, the motive power of this romance is the pas- 
sion for ceramics. The subject had its technical works in 
plenty, but had hardly ever been treated even in the liter- 
ary manner. Lamb, to be sure, has a delightful essay 
ostensibly on Old Porcelain, but it is made of as irrel- 
evant matter as Artemus Ward's lecture on the Babes 
in the Wood. 

At any rate, Champfleury first gave the passion its 
story. 

I have had for a great many years the pleasure of 
owning a copy of the edition de luxe^ in which heavy paper, 
extravagant margins, interleaved etchings, and designs 
in color from the rare ceramics, give the text the 
preciousness of an illuminated manuscript, and add to 
the quaint tale the charm of a work of art. 

The collector's passion expends itself upon multi- 
farious objects, upon books, old pictures, coins, musical 
instruments, arms, autographs and photographs, wigs, 
shoes, canes, snuff-boxes, postage-stamps, theatre tickets 
and programmes, and even buttons. The mania is gener- 
ally thought rather a harmless one, but Champfleury, fol- 
lowing it out remorselessly in his amusing study, shows 
to what perversion it may lead. It is capable of becom- 
ing an enormous egotism and avarice, betraying the 
dearest friendships, revelling in falsehoods and perfidies, 
and may stop little short of robbery and assassination. 



70 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

"There are such innocent passions," he tells us, 
" that begin by twining about a stalwart tree, and end 
by choking the life out of it." — "No passions? 
Gardilanne had them all; he was a collector. Light- 
ning might have struck beside him without diverting his 
attention from a shop window in which he chanced to 
be interested." 

Monsieur Champfleury was especially fitted by his own 
pursuits for the task undertaken. He was for a long 
time the director of the National Porcelain Manu- 
factory at Sevres. Histories of ancient and modern 
caricature, the pottery of the Revolution, of the brothers 
Le Nain, — obscure painters under Louis XIII. whom 
he endeavored to restore to a rightful place in the pub- 
lic esteem, — all show a natural bent toward the rare 
and curious. He himself has been a devotee of the 
fantastic passion he describes. He confesses that the 
three passions of his existence have been Music, Faience, 
and Cats. His taste for the uncommon has marked 
even the most intimate doings of his private life. He 
proposed to his wife, by sending her the message that 
if she agreed with him that the unmarried are like but 
one half a pair of scissors, without the other, he was 
at her service to make a joint endeavor to cut out the 
fabric of life agreeably. She replied laconically by re- 
turning him a pair of scissors. 

His critics say that " realist " is inseparable from his 
name, and that where his friend and intimate, Murger, 
only sang of Bohemian life, he studied it. His fidelity to 
actual types once secured him the singular compliment 
of a beating from a quite unknown peasant who consid- 
ered himself personally meant in a rural skit called 
"The Christmas Geese." 



NEVERS, AND A TUNE ON A FAIENCE VIOLIN ^t 

With a droll irony and a genial overflowing humor 
he gives us all the side-lights, as well, of this pottery 
dilettantism he portrays. 

" Nothing in the collector's cabinet," he tells us, " is 
the result of chance; profound meditations determine 
whether a Chinese pipe is to be suspended above a 
dried Malabar frog or the opposite arrangement is to 
be adopted." 

He shows us the Chineurs^ or professional china-hunt- 
ers, sent down to the country by Parisian dealers in 
curiosities. They push their way into dwellings with 
the brazen effrontery of book-agents or lightning-rod 
men; they get put out of doors, by the flustered house- 
wives, but they return again by the window, as it were, 
and manage, against all opposition, to ransack the house 
for bric-a-brac, from top to bottom. He shows the Paris 
club, that wholly despises china, not making the finest 
pate tendre of Sevres an exception, in favor of its adored 
hobby of faience. And then his leading situations are 
as dramatically amusing as those combinations of ludi- 
crous misery seen on the boards of a French theatre. 

The conceit of a faience violin is not, as it might 
appear — as it did appear to the honest citizens of Nevers 
— a mere conceit. 

There are faience violins. The making of them, 
as an occasional tour de force, was among the achieve- 
ments of the great days of Delft. I myself have looked 
longingly at a charming one preserved in the ceramic 
museum at Rouen. Curiously enough, too, this is the 
one Champfleury has chosen for the etching in his book, 
as nearest the impression he tried to present. 

Possibly it was the sight of it that first suggested his 
idea to him. In the story it is thus described: 



72 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

" It had contours to make a Stradivarius jealous. 
Its enamel was of an incomparable purity. Its delicious 
blue recalled the azure skies of Spain. Not a crack, 
or a blemish even, on the fine curves of the neck. 
Never before had the potter's art reached so high 
an achievement. Angels playing upon viols in the 
clouds displayed a scroll with the motto, Musica et glo- 
ria i?i aer. Below, a group of figures in Louis Quatorze 
costume surrounded a pretty woman at the harpsichord. " 

But, at Nevers, they did not believe in it. A searcher 
for it felt much comforted when he met an old potter 
who would even admit that such a thing was possible. 
For the first time he had encountered some one who 
did not put the very existence of his ardently coveted 
treasure in doubt. 

The marvellous instrument was supposed to be made 
of the faience of Nevers, and there was a tradition that 
it w^as hidden away somewhere in that old town. An 
old poem, in the Mercury of France, even claims that 
this blue and yellow ware of Nevers, brought in by the 
Gonzagas, was the first manufacture of such pottery in 
the country, though I think history will hardly substan- 
tiate that: 

" Chantons, Fille de Ciel, I'honneiir de la Fayence. 
Quel Art! dans I'ltalie il re9ut la naissance, 
Et vint, passant les monts, s'etablir dans Nevers, 
Ses ouvrages charmans vont au de la des mers." 

Sing, Muse, the praises of Faience. 

What an Art! In Italy it had its birth, 

Then passed the mountains to dwell in Nevers, 

Whence now its charming works spread beyond the seas. 

According to this poem the origin of the art was in a 
quarrel between Plutus, the god of wealth, and wise 



Minerva. The former inclined to despise taste and 
skill, placing his reliance solely upon the intrinsic value 
of the precious metals. 

"I will show you, sir," said the goddess, "that I can 
get along very well without your rich materials. I will 
let you see that in my hands the commonest clay be- 
comes precious." She takes up a lump of earth and 
throws it upon the potter's wheel, when lo! — "can I 
believe my eyes? — start in an instant a hundred curi- 
ous vases forth: " 

— " en croirais-je mes yeux, 
Sortent dans un instant cent vases curieux." 

Pursuing her disparagement of his valuable metals, 
she takes up a little of the commonest tin, lead, salt, 
and sand and makes an enamel " dazzling as the sun." 
Then she paints upon her vases figures of shepherds, 
festoons, games with songs and dances, loves, grotesques, 
palaces, and temples. Plutus, not yet abandoning the 
contest, says, "But all this is very flimsy." " Not at 
all," she replies, "it will outlast your metals and mar- 
bles a thousand years." — "And now^ what do I see?" 
concludes the poet; "even proud Paris and supercilious 
London — who would credit it ? — paying tribute to our 
little city of Nevers." 

The " Faience Violin" first introduces to us one Mon- 
sieur Dalegre, a denizen of this favored town, a jolly 
bachelor of fortune, age thirty-five. He has hardly 
even known that such a thing as artistic pottery exists. 
But, making a visit to Paris, he falls in with an old 
friend and schoolmate of his, one Gardilanne, who is a 
confirmed collector. Gardilanne passes for having the 
sharpest scent for such things in all Paris. With him a 
sort of diabolical keenness supplied the lack of money. 



74 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

He has managed, on an income of but a thousand dollars 
a year, as a government clerk, to get together a 
collection that is the envy of the very museums. He 
scarce gives himself time to eat or sleep. For fifteen 
years he has hardly dreamed of anything else but his 
hobby. 

He defies wind, rain, and hail in the pursuit; he 
goes to the length, if need be, of passing himself -off as 
a rag-and-bottle man, to have an opportunity of ex- 
amining old stocks of trumpery. In him the disease is 
fully seated, but in Dalegre we are shown its gradual 
rise and progress. He looks at the plates and ewers 
which his enthusiastic friend places in his hands, with 
about the intelligence of a bat at fireworks. Living 
as he does in so promising a locality, it occurs to the 
Paris collector to turn him to account. He might pick 
up a few pieces, while he was around town, and send 
them up to him as well as not. Dalegre receives his 
directions as to what is desirable, and agrees to do so. 
It is faience or fine stone-ware, in which there are many 
beautiful objects, and not pottery in general, which is 
Gardilanne's particular hobby. " I tell you," said he, 
" porcelain has lorded it long enough. A revolution is 
at hand in ceramics, like that of '89. The bourgeois 
faience is to have its rights, and aristocratic porcelain 
will fall. It will not be persecuted, it is true, but it will 
pass into contempt. That cold and heartless produc- 
tion will be sought only hy parvenu s.'^ 

Dalegre complies with his promise. Praises and pro- 
fuse instructions are showered upon him by his friend. 
"Make tours in the churches," urges Gardilanne. 
" Happily, the village priests know nothing of archae- 
ology; they will let you have things cheap. The 



NEVERS, AND A TUNE ON A FA'iENCE VIOLIN 75 

hospitals, too, are a fruitful field. In their pharmacies 
there are beautiful old jars made to contain drugs. 
Manage to get a wound in hunting, or a sprained ankle; 
a mere scratch will do. The sisters of charity are very 
simple. If you find there is no faience, your complaint 
will of course immediately disappear. If there is, it 
will become serious, and you must manage in the end 
to take, besides the medicine, the bottle that contains 
it." 

Such ardor by degrees inspires a mild interest in the 
subject in Dalegre himself. This is increased by the 
indignation of some people who complain that he is 
robbing his native town of its treasures, for the benefit 
of a cold, greedy Parisian. At last he finds himself bit- 
ten with the infection. He exhibits its symptoms in 
their utmost violence. He becomes a collector on his 
own account. An interior voice bids him sacrifice 
Gardilanne. There is a moral in the story of this 
whimsical passion, as in those selected for especial men- 
tion in the decalogue. Here, too, it is the first false 
step that involves a continually increasing train of evils, 
and at last overwhelms its author in ruin. Had he 
boldly avowed to Gardilanne that he had become a con- 
vert to the taste, and made no secret of his collection, 
all would have been well. But no; he entered upon a 
course of abandoned hypocrisy. He began to send his 
friend packages which he knew to be unmitigated rub- 
bish, as an indication that Nevers was exhausted. The 
confiding Parisian wrote to him of the faience violin, 
which he had just heard of from M. du Sommerard, the 
founder of the Cluny Museum. It was believed to be 
extant at Nevers, and he was adjured to search for it. 
He entered vigorously upon the quest, but he muttered 



76 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

to himself, "Oh, yes, I'll play you a jig upon your 
faience violin." He had become more perfidious than 
lago. 

Thus matters ran on. He has not heard from Gar- 
dilanne — doubtless disgusted with the paltry stuff he 
had sent him — for a long time. His hard heart smites 
him a little, but he does not relent. One day, at sup- 
per, his servant hands him a letter, which has been re- 
ceived in the morning, during his absence. He toys 
with it, and does not break the seal till he has nearly 
finished eating. He gives a cry of dismay. It is a 
notice that Gardilanne is on the way to visit him. He 
is due in twenty minutes. The distracted master runs 
hither and thither, not knowing where to begin. The 
house, full of pottery, must be dismantled; Gardilanne 
must not discover his treason. 

It is hurriedly determined to remove the specimens 
from one other room and the guest chamber, to which 
he may possibly be confined until, at night, the rest can 
be removed and secreted in the cellar. The manoeuvre 
is barely accomplished when the redoubtable Parisian 
collector arrives. He has secured a vacation, and will 
commence to-morrow to beat a grand battue in the 
Nivernais. Dalegre's heart sinks within him; for in 
this tour among the dealers his own occupation must 
inevitably come out. He determines to accompany his 
guest like his shadow wherever he moves, in order to 
find some means of turning aside indiscreet revelations. 
At bed-time the guest inquires what village the old 
servant Margaret is from, and announces his intention 
to talk to her. Most likely she will have recollections 
of seeing some pieces among her people which might 
be desirable. Dalegre feels that if such a talk is per- 



NEVERS, AND A TUNE ON A FAIENCE VIOLIN 77 

mitted the gossiping old woman will betray his secret. 
During the process of concealing the things in the cel- 
lar, therefore, he gives her the most alarming account 
of Gardilanne's purposes in his visit. He instructs her, 
under the heaviest penalties, to appear to be deaf and 
dumb, and assures Gardilanne that she is. The great 
Sainte-Beuve treated of the story in his " Causeries de 
Lundi. " He speaks of this scene, the furtive stowing 
away of the crockery in the cellar, the fear entertained 
by Dalegre lest the guest should awake at the delicious 
clicking of the pieces and lest he himself should be 
precipitated headlong down the stairs with his basket, 
in punishment of his perfidy, as one of the most excel- 
lent in a book which he calls the description of a unique 
case in moral pathology. 

The Nevers collector is exposed at too many points. 
He can escape neither harrowing anxieties nor ultimate 
discovery. Lies upon lies flow from his tongue. Once, 
by a blunder of Margaret, a lovely mustard-pot was 
put upon the table. Gardilanne half-closed his eyes 
and clacked his tongue over it. Dalegre hastened to 
explain, in trepidation, that it was an heirloom, — 
handed down from his grandfather, by which he set great 
store. Later on, a faience writing-desk, left in the 
salon by oversight, was discovered. 

" This also was handed down — " stammered Dalegre. 

"From your grandmother^ no doubt," cut in Gardi- 
lanne dryly. 

"Yes," assented Dalegre humbly. "We provincials 
live so much in our family traditions." 

And still again, the old Margaret, forgetful of the 
admonition she had received, and tired of keeping her 
tongue so long idle, while waiting on the guest alone at 



78 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

breakfast, began to talk to him. " Monsieur has not 
much appetite," said she. 

He was abstracted, and carried on a conversation for 
some moments without thinking of its strangeness. 
But suddenly he exclaimed, "You are not deaf, then?" 

Pressing her hands desperately over her ears, as if 
it were somehow possible to remedy the irreparable 
blunder, the old woman cried at the top of her voice, 
"Oh, yes, I am! I am deaf! I am deaf!" 

From this point to the crisis of the story, the discov- 
ery of the faience violin, Dalegre and Gardilanne are 
as ill at ease in each other's company as two galley- 
slaves dragging the same chain and meditating different 
methods of escape. They come, upon the last day of 
their rounds, to an old shed full of second-hand goods, 
on the quay. To Dalegre's astonishment, Gardilanne, 
after a little inspection of the interior, appears to be 
impressed with a bulky wardrobe about which there is 
absolutely nothing of interest, and begins to drive a 
bargain for it. 

" It is worth a good fifty francs, if it is worth a sou," 
said the proprietor. 

" Come, now, you are chaffing. I will give you 
forty," said Gardilanne. 

" Why, I can get you a cart-load of them for half the 
money," expostulated Dalegre aside. 

After further jockeying, Gardilanne promises to think 
about it. They leave the shop; but no sooner are they 
again at Dalegre's door than Gardilanne claps his hat 
desperately upon his head, fairly takes to his heels, 
leaving his amazed host in the lurch, and returns to 
the dealer. He renews the bargaining for the wardrobe. 
Amid the rubbish in the interior, the artful collector 



NEVERS, AND A TUNE ON A FAIENCE VIOLIN 79 

has discerned the marvellous violin. It sang to him like 
a rare bird from an ignoble thicket. Dissembling his 
ecstatic feelings, he affects to make light of it as a petty- 
children's toy. ^ 

" Nothing of the kind," said the dealer; " that violin 
is worth six francs, I can tell you," 

Gardilanne thought he should be seized with vertigo. 
He was obliged to sit down. Six francs for a treasure 
worth six thousand at least! These are the shocks that 
shorten the collector's existence. "I'll tell you what 
I'll do," he managed to say, with a tremulous effort at 
self-control. " Throw in that crockery trifle, and I will 
give you forty francs for your wardrobe. I have a small 
nephew to whom I suppose I might make it a present." 

The dealer consented, with an appearance of grum- 
bling. Gardilanne departed, with his treasure under 
, his arm. "But you have not told me where to send 
the wardrobe! " called the man after him. 

"To the bottom of the river!" he muttered, hurry- 
ing on. 

Who can picture the condition of Dalegre when the 
marvellous violin, thus carried off from under his very 
nose, was shown to him ? A mist swam before his eyes; 
he could hardly see it. And the triumphal entry of 
Gardilanne into Paris! He was prouder than a con- 
quering general returning from his wars. 

Time did not abate the chagrin of Dalegre, but rather 
increased it. He felt at last that he could not live 
without the inestimable treasure. At night he dreamed 
of a St. Cecilia drawing tones from it clearer and sweeter 
than those of crystal. He went to Paris to throw him- 
self upon the mercy of Gardilanne. If he did not have 
it, he should die. Arrived there, he found his friend as 



8o A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

full of enthusiasm as ever. He was assured that Paris 
lived but for faience. His heart failed him, and he 
dared not prefer his preposterous request. He was 
taken to the club, and heard porcelain unsparingly de- 
nounced. He was introduced to this one, who collected 
only revolutionary pottery ; another, pieces with fleur- 
de-lis; another, pieces with game-cocks, of which he 
had already more than seventeen thousand; another 
whose hobby was shapes of fruits and vegetables. He 
saw a thimble of Henri Deux ware which had cost six 
hundred and twenty thousand francs, and Madame 
Dubarry's faience phaeton. He passed through a 
museum of faience lions, tigers, and dragons, but Or- 
pheus-like he clutched the memory of the faience violin 
to his breast, and passed their yawning jaws in safety. 

He resolved to return to his home and write what he 
dared not speak. His pathetic letter enhanced the 
charms of the faience violin amazingly, like the fame 
of a wilful beauty for whom despairing suitors have 
blown their heads off. 

It was read by its proud recipient to the faience club 
in full council. 

Still Gardilanne relented to the extent of agreeing to 
leave it to him in his will. Thenceforward, reproach 
himself as he would, Dalegre lived only in the hope of 
the testator's death. He prepared the place the violin 
should occupy upon the wall, and looked forward with 
unceasing desire to the time when he should rapturously 
fix it there. Meanwhile, it was securing a European 
reputation. A Dutch savafit^ with the sublime effront- 
ery of his race, published a memoir claiming it as of the 
manufacture of Delft. Then did every member of the 
faience club sink his private theory and unite in a com- 



NEVERS, AND A TUNE ON A FAIENCE VIOLIN 8 1 

men rebuke of the audacious Hollander. Before all, the 
honor of France must be vindicated. 

Gardilanne died, and the violin passed into the pos- 
session of Dalegre. The emotions of this poor man 
seemed to have been tried to the limit of endurance. 
But they were to be racked still further. While mak- 
ing his elaborate preparations for suspending the violin 
in his cabinet, the fancy took him to play an air upon 
it. He tightened up the pegs to secure the proper pitch. 
More. A faience violin is not made to stand the pres- 
sure of ninety pounds to the square inch, which the 
strings at their full tension exert. It flew in pieces. 
For a moment the unhappy man was mute. Then he 
rushed in fury upon the rest of his museum. His serv- 
ant endeavored to stop him; he hurled her against a 
cabinet of specimens, which crashed down and added to 
the ruin. The passers-by rushed in; the fire depart- 
ment followed ; under their feet the remains of the collec- 
tion were ground to powder. Dalegre went stark mad. 
A friend of his gave utterance in a cafe to a witticism, 
which must be rendered in its own tongue: "Dalegre 
has fallen into defaience.'' 

The author, however, is a merciful person, who by no 
means desires to lay himself open to the attention of 
the proposed society for the protection of readers. He 
does not leave us with the clamor of this complete 
catastrophe ringing in our ears. A supplemeiitary 
paragraph explains that Dalegre had a benevolent aunt 
and pretty cousin in the place, who took care of him in 
his sickness. He had brain fever for a month, during 
which he dreamed that the world was inhabited entirely 
by faience people, who were very polished and brilliant, 
it is true, but declined to have any intercourse with each 




82 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Other for fear of spoiling their enamel. He awoke en- 
tirely recovered from his delusion. After a proper in- 
terval, he espoused the pretty cousin, who took care 
never to allow him to relapse into it again. 

Such is the vivid account — which the unique character 
and rarity of the volume may be an apology for having 
paraphrased at some length — furnished by a competent 
witness, of the possible vagaries of the passion for pot- 
tery. Few of us would be prepared from any personal 
experience to guarantee it. Its substantial correctness 
must rest for the most part upon the reputation for 
accuracy of the author. The rage is not easily under- 
stood by reasonable people. The taste itself is less 
difficult of comprehension. It is, with those who pos- 
sess it, a sort of instinct. Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tague, indignant at Richardson for some slighting 
reference to it, and casting about for an argument to 
refute him, could find nothing better to advance than 
that it was enjoyed by a prominent person in the social 
world at that time. ^' I cannot forgive him [Richard- 
son]," she says, "his disrespect of old china, which is 
below nobody's taste, since it has been the Duke of 
Argyll's, whose understanding has never been doubted 
either by his friends or his enemies." 

But if other reasons were needed than the smooth and 
flowing forms, which have properties in common with 
the liquids they are for the most part made to contain, 
the outlines of flower and leaf and curling waves and 
beautiful women, the cream and pearl-tinted enamels, 
the dainty patches of color, — pink of sea-shells, blue of 
the sea and of lapis-lazuli and turquoise, the ruby reds 
and opaline iridescence, — doubtless they could be found. 
One is the apparent capability for use of even the most 



NEVERS, AND A TUNE ON A FAIENCE VIOLIN 83 

elaborate specimens. It gives them an air of honest 
worth, lacking in the gingerbread articles which are 
solely objects of ornament. Another is the odd marks, 
the anchors, arrows, crosses, and monograms, upon the 
pieces, which show the personal interest taken in them 
by their makers, like that of painters in their pictures. 
The great age of that art of which they are the product 
is again an attraction. There are specimens extant 
three thousand years old, as bright in color as the day 
they were made. The potter's wheel is one of the old- 
est of human mechanisms; after centuries of progress 
toward patent side-draught and stem-winding improve- 
ments: frescoes of four thousand years ago in the cata- 
combs of Thebes show it to have undergone no change. 
More potent than all the rest is perhaps some subtle 
influence emanating from the trial by fire. Whatever 
has bravely undergone tribulation diffuses an involun- 
tary air of respect for itself all about. Yonder pretty 
vase, of the thickness of an egg-shell, has withstood a 
heat of 4,717 degrees. It was not shrivelled like a leaf 
at the first breath of the hot blast, but endured its whole 
fury for days, and came forth glorious at last, like 
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, from the fiery 
furnace. Henceforth the ruggedest stone and the hard- 
est metal will corrode and fail, while it blooms un- 
changed in its coquettish beauty. As if all possible 
calamities were concentrated in that one furious trial, 
and having passed it nothing else could harm it, it has 
entered upon an immortal existence. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE CITIES OF PROVENCE AND ESPECIALLY AVIGNON 

To have started so entirely without prejudices, either 
for or against, made the task of choosing both more 
difficult and easier. It greatly widened the field, while, 
when the right spot (to our eyes) was finally hit upon it 
would enable our decision to be very summary. As 
there was absolutely no place, a priori^ we would not 
have lived in, the large city of Lyons, being en 7'oute^ 
was naturally considered. 

Lyons would not do. Tame and featureless, in spite 
of its bustling affairs, in spite of the bold heights around 
it, up which t\\Q ficelle, the string, as they call it, takes 
you, horses, carts, and all, like the cable-road of Cin- 
cinnati, I can only conceive of one living there if kept 
by handsome pay. Ancient Vienne, Valence, Orange 
would not do. At Valence lodgings might have been 
had in the house next to the one occupied by the young 
Napoleon when a second lieutenant in garrison there, 
and I am not sure but in that very one itself. He must 
often have looked off from the eastern terrace of the 
town to the Alps, and from the western to the splintered 
old ruin of Crussol that accompanies the view so long, as 
you journey down the wide plain of Provence. Of what 
were his meditations in those days? Surely not much 
of house-hunting. How are great things ever accom- 
plished when the smallest require such a deal of pains? 

84 



THE CITIES OF PROVENCE AND AVIGNON 85 

What I had really thought in advance was Avignon. 
I sincerely hoped Avignon would do. When we talked 
of Avignon in Paris, however, a French friend used to 
pooh ! and bah ! at it in what we should call a highly 
American spirit. 

" You will have used up its antiquities in three days. 
Petrarch and his Laura will last you just half an hour," 
he would say. "And then how will you occupy your- 
selves ? No, if you will seek the Midi, keep on rather 
to Marseilles. There you will find movement, a proper 
stir of life, the theatre — a big city, in fact, and its re- 
sources. " 

Each one speaks after his own taste, and these con- 
siderations left us unmoved, though Marseilles itself, 
all unknown as it was, evoked ideas of southern warmth 
and gayety, and it would have seemed by no means a 
disagreeable fate. Provence opened well as to the for- 
wardness of vegetation. Cold and wintry behind us 
still, here, on the 9th of April, the peach and almond 
trees were in bloom, and the generality of the trees well 
budded out. In spite of this, however, and the perennial 
foliage of the olive, the moist green of Burgundy was 
finished. The face of the plain and the mountains 
that inclose it have a gray, mud-colored, sad tone that 
it would take all the traditional sunshine of Provence to 
brighten. It recalled Southern California in the dry 
season, but without the oranges. It recalled it, too, 
even to the winds, except that the winds that raise the 
dust-storms at Los Angeles or Riverside have no such 
persistency as the famous mistral^ which tears through 
the gorges of Montelimar, and becomes the scourge of 
all the country down to Marseilles, and of Marseilles 
worse than all the rest. 



S6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

The first requirement of an Old World town was a 
good site for its fortress, just as the starting-point of a 
Western border town is its railway station, its "saloon," 
and its grocery. At Avignon was found an excellent 
bold, flat-topped rock to put the castle upon, and the 
broad Rhone beside it made the best of waterways for 
commerce. When the expatriated popes had acquired 
it, in the time of the great schism, they covered the 
rock with a gigantic brown-stone fortress palace, which 
ancient Froissart calls " the strongest and finest abode 
in all the world." It is on so great a scale that the 
city round about, though it contains forty thousand 
people, seems a mere scattering of tributary huts. 
Connect this with a ruinous suburb, having a mediaeval 
fortress pure and simple on a like scale, by a bridge with 
most of its arches broken, — the bridge upon which, ac- 
cording to the nursery rhyme, there used to be so much 
dancing, — and you have Avignon. Its antiquities, 
its architecture, its traditions were all charming, and 
corresponded to the preconceived ideal ; occupation for 
one's idle moments would never be wanting there. 
Then, too, the principal modern street, leading from 
the station, made an unexpectedly fine display of shops; 
there was a clinking of officers' swords, and a cheery 
promenading in the evening in the Place de I'Hotel de 
Ville; and there was, above all, the fresh vitalizing 
breath of the Felibrige, the literary movement which 
has revived the glories of old Proven9al poetry. It was 
my good fortune to see something of the new trouba- 
dours, — bluff, hearty old Roumanille, in the Rue Saint 
Agricol, and kinglike Mistral, in his village of Maillane, 
amiable, genuine people all. 

On the Doms rock, the choicest of all sites, nothing 



THE CITIES OF PROVENCE AND AVIGNON 87 

rural appeared but the small public garden, whence you 
had the view over the level country, — the wide Rhone, 
turbid and headstrong as the Mississippi, and snow- 
patched Ventoux in the distance. Ventoux is the signal 
point; while snow rests on Ventoux, it is not yet sum- 
mer. In the old town, once compressed within ram- 
parts, it was useless to seek any open space for living. 
And let us make a general rule of it at once; the same 
is true of all old towns everywhere. In the new dis- 
trict, near the station, which, crabbedly, never comes 
to meet an European town more than half way, — this 
district — hum! hum! — it was low and flat, filled with 
factories smoking lustily, and the cottages of their work- 
people. It was Avignon, to be sure, but, even sup- 
posing something presentable to offer there, — and it did 
not chance to, — such an environment was not in the 
purview of the expedition. I began to surmise for the 
first time that the search for the desired house and 
garden might be a difficult one. 

I had been in wretched, many-storied Rue Abraham 
and Place de Jerusalem of the ancient Jews' quarter, not 
house-hunting, but curiosity-hunting, for the two pur- 
suits were inextricably mingled ; then under the brown 
awnings of the queer, crowded, entertaining market in 
the Place Pie; and had swung round back to the Rue 
Joseph Vernet and the chapel of the Oratoire, which, 
being circular and quite open within, pleasingly suggests 
a little Gothic Pantheon. There were bills out on two 
houses near by, — wide, respectable, even stately houses. 
My ring was answered by an ancient servant, or con- 
cierge (though the concierge system can hardly be said 
to prevail in the smaller towns), in an extraordinarily 
clean white cap. She retained a guarded air, as who 



88 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

should say, " You may be all right, coming along in this 
sudden way, with a strange accent, making inquiries 
as if you meant to live here, and I shall say nothing to 
your face to the contrary, but the thing is very much 
open to doubt." She had a first-story apartment, at 
one thousand francs a year. It could not be shown, 
however, for another fortnight, and, as it would ob- 
viously have been imprudent for me to wait so long, I 
do not know to this day what it was like. The other 
was a second story, at only six hundred francs. It was 
up a very high cold stone stairway. The parquetry 
floors of the north have disappeared; we are in a land 
of stone and tiles now, a land that plans for summer 
rather than winter. There was no way of entering the 
various rooms, five or six of them and of good size, ex- 
cept through each other, there being no corridor. All 
the water used would have to be brought up from a 
fountain in the court below. It would be compensation, 
of course, to have had carved lions' heads, but I fear 
hardly enough. 

I did not often avail myself of the services of house- 
agents, where they existed, nor of the notaries who 
sometimes charged themselves with renting property. 
These persons, quite unaware that you may have all 
Europe — with Africa thrown in — for your hunting- 
ground, or that you could think of settling in any other 
place than theirs, proceeded with a hopeless delibera- 
tion. They proposed to settle down to it comfortably 
and make a campaign of weeks, or, for what I know, 
of years, as the case might require. In the first place, 
they wanted to make an appointment with you, to pre- 
pare a list. Then they would accompany you them- 
selves, and, being rheumatic or otherwise disabled, get 



THE CITIES OF PROVENCE AND AVIGNON S9 

on with mortal slowness; and they would try to show 
you everything, even to the last window-catch in a given 
apartment. Or they would send a blundering youth 
with you, who brought the wrong keys or could not find 
the right address. Or they would, perhaps by way of 
showing you the extent of their affairs, send you to 
places that were already rented, or that the occupants 
declared had never been to rent. 

And finally they would take great pains to prevent 
your getting any general grasp of all the vacancies in 
the place, or looking at any other than such as chanced 
to be in their hands. The advertisements in the local 
papers are but a slight resource, as these are not ad- 
vertising communities. It is the general custom to put 
out bills on all houses to rent; thus you have only to 
choose the quarter that suits you, and if you do not find 
what there is it is the fault of your own diligence. 
My plan of verifying in advance the architectural and 
other attractions of the given place, to see if these were 
going to be strong enough to hold us, took me to all 
parts of it. Indeed, were it not for this plan, I should 
have to marvel, in summing up the collection, how 
uniformly the habitations to rent found themselves in the 
neighborhood of some fine monument, — much as another 
sage traveller marvelled that wherever you found a great 
city you were sure to find a great river flowing by it. 
It was precisely in issuing from these monuments that 
I saw the habitations to rent. Of course there was 
liability to oversight, under such a system, and I will 
not maintain that I did not overlook plenty of oppor- 
tunities, veritable jewels of homes for our purpose. 

The Rue de la Vieille Poste was a mere winding dark 
alley, but the apartment at the corner had a window 



90 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

looking into the Place du Palais. A mosaic-paved 
vestibule, a dining-room, and a kitchen on the damp 
entrance floor, the kitchen faced with Moorish-looking 
tiles; then, up a narrow winding stair, a handsome large 
sunny drawing-room and a bedroom, and above that, 
again, a servant's room; and finally the right to share 
in an inclosed square of garden, full of rather sober 
myrtles, laurels, and cypress, with a bit of historic tower 
looking down upon it. I tried to figure how, if we took 
it, we would harden our hearts to the lot of the maid 
in the damp kitchen, pass but the briefest possible mo- 
ments daily in the damp dining-room, and then seek 
refuge in the sunny salon, and give our time to gaz- 
ing rapturously at the glimpse of the Palace of the 
Popes. It went down on the list, for want of something 
better. As I turned into that same Place again, the 
mistral was whistling loudly, and even rattling small 
gravel along the base of the grandiose Palais de la 
Monnaie, close by, which is more boldly original and 
striking in its way than its vaster rival across the square. 
My French local guidebook naively pretended that the 
streets of Avignon were made narrow and tortuous to 
defeat the searching violence of this remorseless north 
wind. This theory would do very well, except that every 
other town and village in Europe, Turin excepted, is 
built upon the same plan. What is more certain is that 
the modern Chamber of Commerce was put where it is, 
across the open southern end of the Place, to keep the 
irruptions of hurricane out of the heart of the city. 

Other apartments could have been had in a private 
palace of Julius II., the heritage of a decayed noble 
family, the vestiges of whose escutcheon remain over 
the door, where it was battered to pieces in the Revolu- 



THE CITIES OF PROVENCE AND AVIGNON 9 1 

tion. Henry IV., and even so much rarer a celebrity 
as Saint Francis de Sales, had slept in it. But it was 
in a darker and narrower street than all the rest; they 
did not mind such things in those days. Meantime, too, 
the mistral, which I would not greatly believe in at first, 
was daily more impressed upon me as a positive and 
standing disadvantage of climate. The best authorities, 
including those whose local patriotism might well enough 
have obscured their honesty, agreed that it was a veri- 
table scourge. Stendhal says it is the drawback to all 
pleasures one might enjoy in Provence. The lamented 
Roumanille told me it had once flattened him against 
the wall like a leaf. It uproots trees and tears down 
houses, and blows three, nine, even twelve days at a 
time. What then should we do here, when I recollected 

that S , in Paris, had a horror, above all things, of 

having her hat-brim blown about by the breeze ? 

Nevertheless, as there are degrees and variations of 
it, I continued to look longingly in Provence, and some- 
times almost to forget it. I looked at Tartarin's — and 
King Rene's — Tarascon; at Saint Remy; at the rock- 
cut marvels of Les Baux, which some one has called " a 
Pompeii of the Middle Ages; " and at Aries. At Les 
Baux you could have bought a beautifully carved Renais- 
sance dwelling outright for three hundred dollars, and 
could probably have rented it in proportion. It would 
not be bad at all to pass a vacation there. At Aries is 
a pleasant Moorish touch in the minor habitations, a 
trace still, perhaps, of the long Saracen domination 
there. The house that chiefly caught my eye was on a 
street leading up to the Roman arena, and showing at 
the end a square Moorish watch-tower looming up 
grandly on the top of that massive work. It was at 



gi A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Tarascon, in the Rue des Halles, that the pleasant 
matron whom, in doubt, I asked as to the direction of 
the sun in her apartment answered, in affected confu- 
sion : " Mo7t Dieu ! I have never stopped to think of 
it. I've never taken my bearings here. " Alas! it was 
bare, uncompromising north; nothing could have been 
more so. 

There again, at Tarascon was king-like Mistral, chief 
of the troubadours, doing so commonplace a thing as 
start in on a railway journey, and I had one more 
hearty shake of the hand from him. 



CHAPTER VIII 

WITH THE NEW TROUBADOURS AT AVIGNON 

I HAD seen something in a familiar way of the Felibres, 
the people who had given Avignon the latest of its many 
forms of celebrity. They have had the gift of inspiring 
great interest and enthusiasm in many American literary 
men, and I shall not do amiss, perhaps, in setting down 
some brief impressions of them. 

I had brought a letter from an American poet to 
Roumanille, since deceased, the Nestor of the group. 
But before presenting it, in order to meet them a little 
more on their own ground, I set out for a certain amount 
of exploration of the place. 

I went first, or at least very early in the day, to the 
old bridge of the traditional dancing " Sur le pont d' Avi- 
gnon^ any danse; ony danse.'' It could have been nothing 
like quadrilles that they ever danced there, for it is very 
meagre and narrow. No wheeled vehicle, for instance, 
could ever have passed over it — though, to be sure, they 
had no wagon-roads nor wheeled vehicles in those 
times. It was paved with cobble-stones, among which 
the grass is growing. Only three or four of once nu- 
merous arches remain. A portion is bordered with light 
iron railings, but the final end remains entirely open, 
a high, abrupt, dizzy termination above the formidable 
Rhone. The river is very wide. Who could ever have 
suspected the Rhone, of sunny, poetic Provence, and 

93 



94 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

SO far from its Alpine origin, of being turbid, mad, 
headstrong, unnavigable, uncontrollable? One would 
have expected to see it thoroughly tamed by all these 
centuries, by all these generations of men, civilized and 
uncivilized, that have abode by it and swayed it, in this 
old, old country. But all this occupation has left no 
trace; it would make nothing at all of sweeping away 
its bridges, if it took the notion. The most striking 
commentary upon the ephemeralness of man is this un- 
ruly, lonesome river, 'Jike some flood of the virgin wilds 
of America. 

Probably it was the farandole they danced on the 
bridge. They dance it still, the peasants, in couples, 
footing it merrily, at the /^/^j" given at each of the seven 
gates of Avignon in turn. The city ramparts, restored 
by the learned architect Viollet-le-duc, are all complete; 
but somehow they did not appear to me at all impres- 
sive. Low, built chiefly on a level, it seemed as if al- 
most anybody, with a ladder, could get over them. I 
found afterward that, in making the encompassing 
boulevard, a deep moat had been filled in which had 
added greatly to their height. 

A long, modern — very modern — bridge leads to Vil- 
leneuve-les-Avignon, on the other side of the stream. 
It has a solid support upon a low, virgin island, Barthe- 
lasse, in the centre, while two suspension spans, from 
this, cross the two arms of the powerful current. Bat- 
talion after battalion of soldiers, in coarse linen undress, 
out to practise target-shooting, were returning swiftly 
on it. The road was glaring and Villeneuve-les-Avignon 
remote, but in the attractive mediaevalism of the latter 
all inconvenience was well repaid. The castle-fortress 
of Saint-Andre is almost wholly preserved without, 



WITH THE NEW TROUBADOURS AT AVIGNON 95 

while within it is a complete ruin. Nowhere else have 
I seen a grander ruin of its sort. Like the Palace of 
the Popes, over there at Avignon, its vast scale dwarfs 
everything around it. A shepherd, with flock and 
sheep-dog, rose from a reclining position on the slope, 
by the great towers, to come and serve as guide. 
Through an arched gap in the ramparts, big enough for 
an ox-cart, I looked down into a town full of sculptured 
fagades and portals that show the feudal luxury of which 
it was once the abode. It is now abandoned to poverty 
and squalor. The dancers' broken bridge once reached 
across as far as this. 

From this point of view Avignon, opposite, seems to 
consist mainly of the vast Papal Palace and the garden- 
planted cliff of the Doms. The roofs of the town 
are hardly more than scattered potsherds about these 
two masses. And what shall I say of its tone ? All is 
a monotonous mud-color as if the turbid Rhone had 
gone over it and left a deposit. Even the tile roofs 
are not red. The river, the city, the roads are all of 
the same dusty hue. It is the hue of Provence, for the 
rest, of the whole sun-baked, wind-swept district, almost 
as far as Nice. It is fair to tell the color of your land- 
scape, I suppose, as you would that of people's hair 
and eyes. Well, the mud-hue is so marked here, that 
you long to have license to dash on such ruddy tones 
and time-stains as characterize the Alhambra, for in- 
stance — and thus make the picture rich and complete. 

A pale, cold moonlight lit the town and river when I 
returned; the frogs were croaking forlornly in the Mis- 
sissippi-like island of Barthelasse, and the wind was 
cold upon my back. But I went then to the house of 
RoumaniJle, in the Rue St. Agricol, and there all 



g6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

thought of chilliness was speedily dissipated. Nearly 
opposite it was the very curious ancient church of Saint- 
Agricol, its much sculptured, time-eaten front, of drab, 
or mud-colored, sandstone, packed close amid houses, 
while in front a small terrace with broad staircase at the 
side completed one of those arrangements that scene- 
painters love to give us as a setting for romantic operas 
and dramas. 

Roumanille's house was a modest book-shop. Like 
the talented Aubanel and others he united the func- 
tions of poet and story-teller with that of publisher and 
bookseller. He began the Felibrige movement in 1847, 
and was naturally no longer young. He was a figure 
of the Victor Hugo or Walt Whitman type, gray, hale, 
hardy, well preserved. Born, as he said of himself, 
" one fine day in harvest-time, of a couple of gardeners, 
in their garden of Saint-Remy," he had kept up a certain 
bluntness, a harmless affectation perhaps, intended to 
identify him still with the class from which he sprung. 
He let it be well understood that no finical over-refine- 
ment as a man of education and letters had led him 
away from unspoiled nature. In the manners, customs, 
and racy unstudied language of the common people he 
found his inspiration, and in the approval of these peo- 
ple his first success. He knew how to be very simple 
without vulgarity. He refines away grossness, yet can 
be understood by the humblest. When you read his 
Co7ites Proven^aux^ quaint vigorous tales, full of fine 
observation and humor, you almost fancy it is the 
peasants themselves talking. I am just looking over 
one of them. How easily it begins, as if the narrator 
were seated familiarly by the fireside! 

" We were saying then, you know, that Saint Peter 



WITH THE NEW TROUBADOURS AT AVIGNON 97 

and his divine Master sometimes descend from heaven 
to earth, to see how things are getting along in this 
poor old world of ours." 

They meet a poor carpenter, who in return for some 
service, is granted three wishes. Unaware of the char- 
acter of his guests, he wishes in a very frivolous spirit. 
Does it seem sacrilegious ? On the contrary, with all 
the humor, it is treated reverently. Saint Peter is net- 
tled, in a very human way, at the lacking discernment 
of the poor mechanic. "Stupid lout!" he whispers, 
"don't you know anything at all? demand your eternal 
salvation." 

Later, when Death brings the carpenter to heaven, 
thrown across his shoulder, he says: "Ah, it's you, is 
it, Obstinate? Well, I told you once, and I told you 
twice, and I told you three times, to ask for your eternal 
salvation. You wouldn't do it, and yet you come here 
to get into paradise. Very well, now go to the devil, 
my fine fellow! " 

This may not be exactly the way we shall be ad- 
dressed at the portals of heaven, but it is very like the 
way a peasant would tell the story. 

Madame Roumanille was comely and amiable and a 
great many years younger. Her daughter, Mademoi- 
selle Therese, a very pretty and accomplished girl, since 
married to an official and gone to the French Indies, 
was the reigning queen of love and beauty over the 
troubadours of Provence. The custom of a queen of 
love and beauty, to preside over floral games, courts of 
love, and other traditional poetic contests, has been re- 
vived from the days of Clemence Isaure and the early 
minstrels. The term is seven years, and Mademoiselle 
Roumanille had two more to serve. She was second 
7 



98 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

in the line, elected at grand fetes at Hyeres, the first 
having been the wife of Mistral, the poet, elected at 
Montpellier in 1878. The state and appurtenances of 
the office are of the simplest ; but it is a compliment of 
which any woman might be proud. I am sure, in both 
instances it has been most worthily bestowed. A group 
of seven young poets, including a young woman, the 
most recent accession to the ranks, addressed — in 
Provenpal, well understood — sonnets of felicitation to 
Mademoiselle Roumanille, or, in their language, Mada- 
misello Tereset Roumaniho. 

''Thou reignest over Provence," said one Alcide 
Blavet, " in thy simple muslin fichu. Oh, happy he 
who may become thy king! " 

After some little discourse in the shop, we adjourned 
to a pretty i-f^/f?;/ behind it, and talked of America. The 
movement has spread even to that remote point; there 
exists a society of Felibrean poets in New York, of 
which Roumanille is president of honor. Suddenly there 
burst in upon us, like a merry irruption of the mistral 
itself, a gay group of leading Felibres^ who had been 
dining together at some rendezvous of Felibrean inter- 
ests. The principal one was Felix Gras, the poet, 
brother of Madame Roumanille. A large irrepressible 
blonde man, Marieton, editor of a review, sat down at 
the piano and dashed into lively snatches of music. 
Felix Gras stood by it and gave some of the best ballads 
from his own " Romancero " set to the old popular airs 
and abounding in quaint cadence and minor key. His 
thoughtful face lighted up, and he swelled his breast 
proudly and followed the action with gesticulating 
hands, while all the room joined in the refrains. Re- 
freshments were brought — sweetmeats, tea, a cordial 



WITH THE NEW TROUBADOURS AT AVIGNON 99 

expressly named after the Felibres, and wine of Samos, 
golden, tasting the grape, a beverage worthy of a meet- 
ing of poets. 

Marieton was a sort of commercial traveller among 
the troubadours, possibly a bit of a charlatan. He 
would like to hippodrome them, make a show of them, 
and the modesty of those of real merit shrank from 
that. It was his habit to make a yearly tour, ex- 
changing words of good cheer and encouragement with 
the schools of poets in Aquitaine, in Languedoc, and 
in Provence. He was going on to Maillane, to visit 
Frederic Mistral, perhaps the one real genius the 
movement has produced, long the CapouHe\ or Captain, 
of the Felibres. 

The ideal of the propaganda is partly political. 
They desire to abate the egotistical supremacy of 
Paris, by aiding each province to a proper pride in its 
own achievements and way of thinking. They want 
to make an " Empire of the Sun," to unite the Latin peo- 
ples of the Mediterranean, which have natural affinities 
beyond any that hold them to races of other blood and 
languages. Fancy the real power of an alliance com- 
posed of France, Italy, and Spain. This is for the time 
being only a sentimental dream, but a good deal has 
really been done to unite the original seven southern 
provinces of Roman Gaul, to which the Roman Empire, 
in disintegration, left the heritage of very nearly the 
same traditions and language. There was a time when 
there were practically no Pyrenees, when the feudal 
lords of Barcelona ruled at Toulouse and Montpellier, 
and the Langue d'Oc was the speech alike of northern 
Spain and southern France. 

Thus we now find the Spanish Catalans taking part 



lOO A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

in all these courts of love and floral games. They sent 
as their most distinguished representative the poet- 
statesman Zorilla, who was soon to be crowned at 
Granada with gold from the sands of the Darro. On 
the other side of the compass, was an equally close 
affiliation with Roumania, through its queen the ac- 
complished Carmen Sylva and the poet Alecsandri. The 
agency for promoting this fraternity and the new literary 
impulse was the revival of the Langue d'Oc, still in use 
among the people of these wide-extended districts. 

It is not a dialect, a patois; nothing riles your true 
Felibre enthusiast so much as to treat it 3.s patois^ as 
the mockers in the Paris press are continually doing. It 
is simply a language which went to the wall by the for- 
tune of war, while that of the conquerors became stand- 
ard and academic. Dryden, for one, maintained that 
the Provengal was the most finished form of all existing 
speech. Perhaps in these days of complex life one's 
views should favor simplification and unity and not 
divergence, but you could not be in the midst of these 
enthusiasts without liking them and sharing their inter- 
est in this renaissance of Provengal poetry, — almost the 
only sort that has vitality in our day. If it be really 
an essential condition that it should be written in a lit- 
tle-known tongue, why, then let us accept the result and 
be grateful for it, all the same. 

Among contributors to the review were the Queen of 
Roumania, Pierre Loti, Paul Arene, Clovis Hugues, 
Bonaparte-Wyse, Francois Coppee, Mounet Sully of the 
Comedie Frangaise, and many duchesses and countesses 
and other titles high in the social scale. One would 
say that the days when kings and nobles engaged on 
equal terms with singers of humble birth in contests of 



WITH THE NEW TROUBADOURS AT AVIGNON lOI 

merit were to some extent renewed. The Felibres had 
lately given a lovely fete in the old Roman theatre at 
Orange, the drama of " CEdipus the King," with Mounet 
Sully in the title role^ an almost perfect illusion of an- 
tiquity. The Paris society La Cigale — the Grasshopper, 
symbol of careless summer life and sunshine — was as- 
sociated with them in this/^/^. 

These two societies are sometimes confounded ; but 
the Felibres are those devoted to the advancement of 
Proven9al literature, while the Cigale is simply made 
up of notabilities, born in the South of France. Daudet 
is perhaps its best-known member. The two affiliate 
and have merry times at Paris, also. It was claimed at 
Avignon that Daudet's originality simply comes from 
his having done into French the Provencal turns of ex- 
pression familiar in his childhood. 

A slender, blonde young man, retiring in manner, 
wearing a long cloak of the country, read us again a 
very pretty poem, which he had already read at dinner. 
He was one of the younger neophytes, M. Baroncelli- 
Javon, son of a marquis of that name, of a family that 
had followed the papal court from Florence to Avignon 
and was allied to Madame de' Sevigne and Madame de 
Grignan. 

He was good enough to be my companion and guide 
next day in a visit to Frederic Mistral, at his home. 
As we passed through the country the almond blossoms 
were out, but it was far from warm. A chill wind 
pressed the trees and hedges yet a little more in the 
chronic bent they all have southward. The villages 
seemed bare and dreary, the country a wide, nearly 
level plain, of monotonous gray. We crossed the Du- 
rance, another unruly river, worse than the Rhone. Its 



I02 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

frequent overflow, instead of enriching the soil, actually 
burns it up. The Durance with the mistral are set down 
as the two scourges of Provence. From a bridge we 
discerned the distant towers of Chateau-Renard on the 
right and those of Barbentane on the left. Nearly 
every landmark, every rugged gap in the mountains, 
has inspired a poem by Mistral or the others. This 
baptizing of all the familiar objects in song gives a 
charming sentiment, and must add greatly to the home 
feeling of the inhabitants. 

Mistral's village, Maillane, is somewhat larger than 
the others we passed. A cafe or two, the post-office, 
and a stage-oflice, around a bare little Place, constitute 
the centre. There is a great deal in being born in a 
place, — if everything has gone well with one, and Mis- 
tral was born in Maillane. 

His house is a good large one of stone, almost a villa; 
Daudet did not do it justice, in an article he wrote in 
the Centwj a few years ago, in representing it as a 
farm-house. Over the wall at the back of the garden 
is a wide stretch of fertile plain and in the mountains 
some strange shapes are made out, as the " Lion of 
Aries," of the poem. Within, the house was all stone 
and brick, a little chilly. There was a bust of Lamar- 
tine, who was among the first to recognize Mistral's 
epic of " Mireille " as a work of genius, and a bust of 
Verdi, who wrote the music to " Mireille" and made the 
opera, which was then billed on the bill-boards of the 
handsome theatre at Avignon. 

It was a large, handsome, manly-looking man, with 
hair touched with gray, who came forward to meet us. 
He had a fine, open expression and an air of good-fel- 
lowship. He was distinguished : you would ask who 



WITH THE NEW TROUBADOURS AT AVIGNON I03 

he was in any gathering. There was nothing at all of 
the peasant about him. Mistral is, in fact, a man of 
education ; he was the son of a rich farmer, took his 
degree of bachelor at Montpellier and studied law at 
Aix; he is not the untutored rustic genius some would 
have us suppose. He has done, besides his poetical 
work, a great dictionary, a very important linguistic 
enterprise, of high value to the student of the Provengal 
tongue. Yet a good part of his life is very nearly that 
of the peasants. He goes to the cafe of evenings and 
plays his game of whist or billiards with them, and has 
no other associates. He has been much honored in 
France; like Victor Hugo, he takes his mission seriously, 
and the sense of these honors, without spoiling his af- 
fability, has given him a fine, proud look. He is one 
of those that stand apart from the rest of men. Ma- 
dame Mistral, much younger than her husband, is 
handsome, dark, Italian-like, a face of pensive revery. 
They have no children. 

Mistral gave us beer of Avignon, — beer of Avignon 
is not sentimental, and we can hardly think of Petrarch's 
taking it, — and then we talked somewhat of realism 
in fiction and poetry. Mistral seemed to favor the un- 
usual, romantic, perhaps even the bizarre. It is seen 
in his work, too striking incidents kept in check, how- 
ever, by a strong feeling for probability and for con- 
sistency in character, time, and place. In "Mireille, " 
" Mireio," he has epitomized the Provence of the plain, 
in " Calendau " the Provence of the mountains, and in 
" Nerto " the Provence of the Middle Ages, at the pic- 
turesque court of Avignon. Throughout all you find a 
grandiose exaltation, with, at the same time, a strong 
feeling for nature and the simpler human affections. 



104 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

He said he did not care for Longfellow, but greatly liked 
Cooper. One of Cooper's sea-romances had especially 
commended itself to him because it contained a Provencal 
captain who was very well done; he had long remem- 
bered it. 

He proposed we should go and see the house where 
he was born, now occupied by a nephew. Ten minutes' 
drive, toward the hills, brought us to it. It was a real 
farm-house this time, solid, prosperous-looking, with 
barns, wine-house, and stable all joined in one. A table 
outside, consisting of a heavy slab of stone on four 
stone posts, like an altar of Druids, was where they 
dined in summer. In the stable were beds for the farm- 
hands, at but a little distance from the animals. 

" I used to listen much to their tales and gossip in the 
winter evenings," said Mistral. 

Here no doubt he picked up much of the homely, 
intimate traditions that served him in good stead after- 
ward. He lived at this farm, man and boy, till the age 
of twenty-five, and here wrote the first part of "' Mireille. " 
He led us finally to the principal chamber, a large, 
pleasant room, with two windows facing south, toward 
the mountains, and a bed curtained with very old-fash- 
ioned chintz. 

" Well, then," said the poet who had made so great a 
mark in the world, raising his arm with a whimsical ex- 
pression and indicating the room and the bed, " here 
then — for better or for worse — your poor friend was 
born." 

I was privileged to bring away from Avignon, when I 
left it, some signed portraits and books of the new race 
of troubadours. In writing a dedication in one of the 
books, Roumanille amiably inscribes me as a Felibre. 



WITH THE NEW TROUBADOURS AT AVIGNON I05 

If then I am a Felibre, let me try my hand at verse — for 
that is a necessary part of the condition. I will attempt 
to render rudely into English the graceful little poem of 
Baroncelli-Javon. It is typical of a vast production 
of its class from the eleventh century down to the 
present day. 

THE SWALLOW. 

Brief on my window-sill, 

At morn, a swallow stayed. 
Left hand — an omen ill 

That made me sore afraid. 

" Whence, swallow, dost careen?" 

" From where the sunset burns." 
" My sweetheart, then, hast seen?" 

" That have I," he returns. 

' ' As thou didst pass her by, 

harbinger of spring, 
Athwart the trackless sky 

What message bade she bring ? 

" From those dear lips of red 

From her, th' enchanting one, 
What word to me was sped ? " 
" To thee ? — ill-fated ! — none. 

" Another's favored name 

My rapid hearing swept." 
*' Thanks, swallow, yet the same! " 

1 ceased and hapless wept. 



CHAPTER IX 

A FIRST .LOOK AT THE RIVIERA THEN ALL UP AND 

DOWN ALGERIA 

Arriving at Marseilles, the 12th of April, most cheery 
anticipations and romantic illusions about the city of 
Monte Cristo were soon swept away. It was bleaker 
than any part of the Rhone Valley above; vegetation 
which had come out there seemed here to have gone in 
again. A cold, gray, wind-swept, colorless town, com- 
posed of very tall structures devoid of mouldings. Some 
of the shabby hill-climbing streets recalled streets of 
certain American towns, — Albany for one. The famous 
Alices de Meilhan were but a slatternly promenade, and 
walking was muddy on the Cours Belzunce, not even 
gravelled. Great merit in many of the more important 
buildings cannot be denied, but they do not redeem the 
general raw effect. 

Whither next then ? Surely further south, to Algeria ; 
it began to seem as if only there was winter warmth 
a certainty. But the notion took me first of a run 
through the Riviera. It had not been in the programme. 
I had long permitted myself a sort of disdainful air 
toward it. It was a nest of idle fashion and expense, 
not likely to agree with either our purse or our tastes; 
and on various former European journeys I had care- 
fully avoided this route, even for getting into Italy, 
taking many others. There are still estimable people 

106 



THE RIVIERA — UP AND DOWN ALGERIA I07 

who feel the same way. Only the other day we were 
reproached anew by friends in America, ignorant of the 
fund of romance the Riviera contains, in connection 
with its exquisite scenery and climate, for the satisfac- 
tion and pleasure we show in it, since we have become 
converts to its charms. 

But this is a subject to which I shall have to re- 
turn at much greater length another time. 

This time I went more out of curiosity than in pros- 
ecution of my general mission. Not expecting very 
much, I may have been somewhat distrait at the be- 
ginning of the journey. I do not recollect just where 
I was first fully under the shelter of the high Alpine 
ranges that make the Riviera what it is, " the sunny 
garden wall of Europe." Nor do I recall just where I 
saw the first oranges; it was the season of orange blos- 
soms, rather, and the air was perfumed with their rich 
fragrance, the fruit having been mostly harvested. But 
when I did see them, they left an ineffaceable impres- 
sion. They were like yellow lamps, and the landscape 
from which they were missing thereafter seemed cold 
and tame, as if its illumination had gone out. At the 
small station of La Farlede, fifty miles east of Mar- 
seilles, I was suddenly aware of a delicious pink rose 
blooming in the hedge, not ten feet from the car window. 
Perhaps there had been plenty before, which I had 
passed unperceived. Thenceforward, by the flowers, it 
was June, and not April, but by the flowers only, for 
a Riviera spring has a good deal of chill in it too. 

I traversed tentatively the stretch of one hundred and 
fifty miles to the Italian frontier, at Mentone. Saint 
Raphael, discovered by Alphonse Karr, and Cannes, by 
Lord Brougham ; Nice, once a capital of the House of 



I08 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Savoy, and a place of consequence always, quite apart 
from its modern vogue as a winter-station; Monaco, 
with the evil brilliancy of its play-house, and Mentone, 
a lesser Cannes, — this group, clustered near together, 
on the last third of the way, comprise nearly all that it 
contains of importance. 

House-agents enough there were now, used to receiv- 
ing strangers, and ready with ample provision for them. 
Pleasing surprises were in store in more ways than 
one. The greatest of all was that prices were not higher 
in this delightful region than in some forlorn, little, 
hyperborean places with hardly an attraction of any 
kind to offer. Passing between Nice and Monte Carlo, 
and again on the return, I stopped off at the quaint 
town and beautiful harbor of Villefranche. The fleets 
and the yachtsmen of the world seek the harbor, and 
the site is said to have a peculiarly sheltered climate of 
its own. An eccentric agent offered me a lodging in 
the clean, narrow main street of the old town. It 
would not have been half bad, with the mediaeval tone 
and wide sea view, but it was not our house and garden. 

But he had another place, on the hill, out of the town, 
and I went up to see that. The house was large, and 
capable of being made very comfortable, had ample 
ground, oranges, lemons, roses, and lovely views, and 
the price was temptingly low. But, alas! it must be 
let immediately; it could not wait for anybody beyond 
the first of May, and I had committed myself to a jour- 
ney in Algeria, Spain, and western France, and should 
not be content to decide till I had seen the best the 
whole route could offer; and the Paris apartment was 
paid for till the middle of July. The house had all the 
appearance of having stood vacant a few years, and it 



THE RIVIERA UP AND DOWN ALGERIA IO9 

was odd the haste should be so great ; but so it was, 
and I reluctantly left it. 

The voyage from Marseilles to Algiers is supposed to 
take twenty-eight hours; we gave it thirty-four, instead. 
A violent head-wind and turbulent sea lay in wait for 
us outside the breakwater, and buffeted us all the way 
over. I had similar experiences later. This blue 
Mediterranean is generally a stormy sea, and I never 
greatly envied the yachtsmen. Imprimis^ then, Algeria 
is difficult to get to. 

Lights were strung out along the shore of Algiers, 
like lines of shining beads. These marked the streets 
of modern civilization, while others, scattered upon a 
hillside, like the dim sparks of an extinguished bonfire, 
marked the steep, old, Moorish town. A sort of bare- 
legged Othello seized my belongings and piloted me to 
an hotel in the Rue Bab-el-Oued. It was raining, too, 
and I had obscure glimpses of the massive arches of the 
grand quay; the fine new Boulevard de la Republique, 
which is a military bastion as well ; other weird Othel- 
los; the Duke of Orleans on horseback in the large 
Place du Gouvernement, and at one side of it a spacious 
mosque, — a real Arabian mosque, — as fine, neat, and 
perfectly whitewashed as the best reproduction of itself 
in an international exhibition. The hotel was French, 
with some Spanish element in the management, I think. 
The Spanish are strong in the colony, even to the ex- 
tent of causing some jealousy. At Oran, for instance, 
they are largely in the majority, and publish several 
journals of their own. 

The Rue Bab-el-Oued is one of the European streets. 
With its continuation, the Rue Bab-Azoun, it was once 



no A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the main thoroughfare, but it is now reduced to a second 
line, a sort of buffer between the new grandeurs in front 
and the exclusive district of the Moors. Going along 
it, the next morning, I saw, from under the eucalyptus 
and palms of the Place du Gouvernement, the Moorish 
town shining high and white and minareted above. A 
temptation so novel was not to be resisted, and I climbed 
to it without a moment's delay. The plan on paper is 
like a congeries of Arabic letters. It is a sort of hill 
of Montmartre, covered with blind alleys, and turned 
into a hive of grave Moorish industry. Let it be said 
at once that the characteristic Moorish life — the dwell- 
ings, dress, occupations, and habits — are still present in 
surprising fulness. It is indeed Africa, another world. 
The rich Oriental subjects to which the painters have 
accustomed us still wait in unlimited supply. Algiers 
itself gives a better exhibition of this peculiar life than 
any other part of the province; its large population has 
resisted the aggressive European encroachments much 
better than the smaller communities have been able to 
do. The French are no respecters of this Mussulman 
antiquity, and it has been predicted with alarm that in 
a quarter of a century a Moorish building will be as 
great a curiosity for Algerians themselves as for the 
tourists from abroad. In that day the enthusiasm of 
tourists will be greatly cooled, as it has been in these 
late years by the commonplace spirit that has all but 
taken away the charm of Rome. No doubt there have 
been prodigious changes since the arrival of the French 
in 1830; but the stranger, ignorant of these, will think 
it an ample supply of bizarre entertainment that is still 
left him. 

You may stroll about in it all with perfect freedom; 



THE RIVIERA — UP AND DOWN ALGERIA III 

5'ou will come to no greater harm than getting a patch 
of whitewash on your sleeve from the mosque, where 
you have taken off your shoes, or from Ali's diminutive 
cafe, or "Ahmed's" basket-shop. The whitewash is 
universal, except where it is varied, with a happy effect, 
by blue wash or pink wash. The best point of view is 
the battlements of the ancient Casbah, the ruined palace 
where the Janissaries used to set up sovereigns and as- 
sassinate them, — sometimes as many as seven in a day. 
Your eyes wink at the dazzling brightness of the town 
and the wide blue sea beyond it. You may look down 
upon some details of private life, — perhaps a woman in 
a lemon-colored jacket, come forth to talk to her maid 
on the flat roof of her whitewashed house. Singular 
figures promenade also, in no small numbers, in the 
European streets, — the mysterious white-robed waddling 
women, a horseman of Fromentin, in long, dull red man- 
tle, or a group, like Joseph and his brethren, prodding 
some camels along toward the port. 

So far so good. The living accommodations in the 
town are a scanty choice of apartments in the new 
French buildings. For house and garden you would 
have to go out of the gate of Bab-el-Oued or the 
gate of Isly. Passing the latter, the nearer suburbs, 
Mustafa Inferieur and Agha Inferieur, are found given 
up to machine-shops and a populace more or less con- 
nected with these interests. The freer upper por- 
tions were dusty and unfinished, and very steep to 
climb. I remember in Mustafa Inferieur a whole 
pension to rent — and this only — for the summer, fur- 
nished, and at such a price that it was evident this 
"Land of Thirst" retained very few of its habitues in 
the scorching summer season. But Mustafa Superieur, 



112 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

two miles and more from the town, is the quarter 
enjoying the chief favor of strangers. Three-horse 
omnibuses mount to it. It was a curious sensation 
to have in the omnibus some of the mysterious veiled 
women as fellow-passengers. The district was sown, 
as you might say, entirely to modern villas of an ex- 
pensive sort. It is the custom to rent them furnished 
for the winter, and it might be difficult to find one 
unfurnished. The merit of their spacious, well-kept 
grounds could not be denied; the fragrance of their 
flowers weighted the air. It would be charming to take 
up a comfortable country life there, with pleasant neigh-, 
bors close at hand, and go down occasionally, by way 
of a change, for a dip into the decorative Moslemism 
of Algiers. But it was a high climb, and far from 
market. I should think you would want to have horses 
and plenty of servants there, and not be obliged to 
count the cost very closely. The governor-general's 
summer palace is a white, fairy-like abode, embowered 
in luxuriant palms, that makes you think of another 
summer palace, the captain-general's quinta in sultry, 
tropical Havana. 

The gate of Bab-el-Oued gives you more three-horse 
omnibuses, to Saint Eugene and Point Pescade. These 
are on the level and on the border of the sea. Small 
merchants of the town live at Saint Eugene, a mile and 
a quarter out, and gay Sunday excursionists goto Point 
Pescade for fish-chowder, such as Thackeray celebrated 
as bouillabaisse. At Saint Eugene I could have lived 
in a two-story villa, Rue Salvandy, for one thousand 
francs. Its modest garden contained the orange, fig, 
almond, and pomegranate. It was too low to command 
the sea, but from the rear, the south (for the coast here 



THE RIVIERA — UP AND DOWN ALGERIA II3 

looks directly north), there was a charming view of the 
green hill and Notre Dame d'Afrique, the striking 
church built in memory of those who have perished in 
the sea. That same green hill, most likely, cut off a 
great deal too much of the sun in the winter. Here- 
abouts horseshoe arches and bright tiling gave a grace- 
ful Moorish look to some of the villas; but it was a 
real Moorish house, on a small farm of its own, that 
most caught my fancy. 

I heard part of the Easter service at Notre Dame 
d'Afrique. You could take such a position, a little with- 
in the porch, that — and most appropriately — nothing but 
the outspread blue sea was visible. How soft and blue 
it was, that morning! You could never have suspected 
it of malice. Thence upward to a signal station look- 
ing down on Notre Dame; thence upward again to a 
mountain height, from which the signal station was as 
far below as was Notre Dame d'Afrique below the sig- 
nal station, and Algiers below Notre Dame d'Afrique; 
and so, round about, into the clean white village 
of Bouzarea. The snow peaks to the eastward are 
four-square, like a vast snow castle, and the white 
Moorish villas, amid their vegetation in the valleys, are 
like the sugar pieces montees of the confectioners. The 
Valley of the Consuls contains, happily, a patriotic 
memory for Americans. It was the abode of Shaler, a 
United States consul, who left behind him an impression 
which it would be well if more of our consuls could leave 
upon their districts. His Sketch of the State of Algiers, 
written in the barbarous old corsair times, remains the 
best authority on the subject to the present day. Even 
a French writer, with reason discontented, contrasts his 
energy and intelligence with the indifference of whole 
8 



114 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

generations of French consuls. " Though our consuls 
had resided at Algiers ever since the sixteenth century," 
he says, " they had left us in the most absolute igno- 
rance of its topography, customs, language, and history. 
And yet we had much more at stake in the country 
than the United States, for instance, whose representa- 
tive, Mr. Shaler, has written a most interesting history 
of it." At the moment of the conquest such informa- 
tion was of pressing need, and from official sources 
none was to be had. It is to be hoped a like supineness 
does not really characterize the colonization work, so 
much stirred up in the French parHament of late. 

I cannot linger upon the fascinating prospect from 
Bouzarea. It was the village that pleased me most of 
all I saw. Just as there was nothing African about the 
country, in the usual torrid, desert sense, there was 
nothing make-shift or immigrant-like about the village, 
standing on its broad, perfectly well-made road. One 
could quite envy the urchins who were taught in the 
pretty white communal school and enjoyed its glorious 
views. A little further on was a cluster of Kabyle 
dwellings, like "hunks" of plum-cake whitewashed; 
and on a knoll apart a white marabout^ the tomb of a 
holy man, with a clean toadstool of a dome upon it. 

The genuine Moorish house I have referred to was 
easily reached by a short cut from Saint Eugene. It 
stood in the midst of a few cypress-trees, with a tract 
of two hectares in vines about it. It was white, square, 
blockish, flat-roofed, and had few or no windows with- 
out, being lighted, in the customary way, from an open 
court within. The rent was but four hundred francs, 
and the agent furthermore maintained that a return of 
from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred francs could 



THE RIVIERA UP AND DOWN ALGERIA II5 

be got from the vines. Here was something to cause 
an agreeable flutter of excitement : to turn farmer, in a 
Mussulman home, down in Algeria, and derive profit as 
well as pleasure from the experience, — that would be a 
novelty indeed. 

I saw how a civilized family could make something 
quite delectable, quaint, and possibly habitable out of 
the house, fitting it up with draperies, and so on, in 
keeping with itself. The court had some columns and 
horseshoe arches, a well, and a kitchen and three 
chambers about it. Upstairs there were three more 
chambers. None of them received other light than 
what came in by the doors and some round holes over 
them. They were all tinted light blue, and the ceiling 
beams, openly displayed, were rounds of tree-trunk 
with the bark on. It was an altogether unheard-of 
sort of dwelling; but at the worst we could pass all our 
time out-of-doors, which really is what one goes to such 
a climate for. One would have to, if he were going to 
turn all those vines to account; they looked beyond 
the strength of a single person, and especially a novice. 

"You could have a hired man for 80 francs a month," 
suggested the agent. 

" And how much should I have to count on for his 
keep? " 

"About 50 francs a month." 

Let us take to our arithmetic: 80 and 50 make 130; 
equal to 1,560 a year. If the yield of grapes were 
1,500 francs, we should be out by 60 francs. But per- 
haps it would be 1,800. No doubt the estate had been 
cultivated in its time by Christian slaves taken by the 
corsairs, and it was allowable to presume that one of 
them had run away with his master's sympathizing 



Il6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

daughter; the romantic should stand for something. 
Then, too, the yield might be increased. When I in- 
quired of a garde-champetre^ afterward, as to the char- 
acter of the native servants, he replied: "For one 
thing, the indigene has no judgment about the vine. 
He can't get it through his head, like a white man." 
He said that these men were mild and tractable enough, 
in spite of their wild looks, and that their greatest vice 
was small pilfering. 

I journeyed by rail all along the northern belt of 
Algeria, more than two hundred and fifty miles, to Oran. 
The country was green and pastoral, planted with rich 
crops or flower-clad, like California in springtime. Now 
and again there were bananas waving their broad tat- 
tered leaves ; orange groves with fruit glowing very red ; 
muddy rivers cutting deeply through their clay banks; 
lonesome white marabouts afar; Arabs, old, old as the 
hills, minding their flocks, statue-like, under a bush. 

Next in attraction to Algiers, — at a long remove — 
was Blidah. One of its Arab poets has said of it, quaintly : 

" Others call you a little town, but I — I call you a 
little rose." 

Any later poet might well find inspiration in its prin- 
cipal avenue. It consists of a double line of lovely 
orange-trees, all in flower at the time of my visit. The 
perfume is so continuous and all-pervading that you 
wonder if you ought not to take precautions against it, 
as you ought not to keep flowers in your chamber at 
night. The well-to-do lived on a comfortable avenue 
of new two-story houses amid shrubbery, near a small 
park, which, though new, contained part of an ancient 
Sacred Wood. A four-room brick cottage on the ave- 
nue leading from the station was seven hundred francs 



THE RIVIERA — UP AND DOWN ALGERIA II7 

a year. Prices were certainly not less than at Algiers. 
I spoke of this at my hotel. " Oh, yes," replied a resi- 
dent, with a brisk, matter-of-course air, " things are 
dearer here." As I waited to have some peculiar local 
explanation of it, he added, " There is no competition, 
you see." I found that an American had been farming 
on a large scale near Blidah for ten years past. Have 
I said that cheap American chromos are rather frequent 
in the Moorish shops in Algiers? Such subjects as 
"Thanksgiving in New England" and "A Trotting- 
Match on the Bloomingdale Road" hang on their 
walls. 

Bou Farik and Beni Mered, before Blidah, and El 
Affroun, Affreville, and others, after, — prosperous new 
villages all. Each has its Moslem quarter, which has 
become much what " China-town" and " Spanish-town" 
are in California. The natives bear themselves with 
much more dignity, but when they have a service to 
demand of you they do it with a meek gentleness that 
reminds you of the Mexican Indians. I aided one of 
them to send an express package. He could neither 
read nor write, and it was a question of filling out the 
blanks in the printed formula. Between us we got off 
a basket of thirty-five kilogrammes, from Haj Hamet 
Kaboosh, of Relizane, to Haj ben Ahmed, at the 
Moorish market, Adelia. I sincerely trust it arrived 
safely. It rained hard a good part of the way, the 
slopes of the Atlas were sprinkled with snow, and it 
was chilly. Some pretend that, owing to the great 
planting of trees, the climate has wholly changed. The 
women used to wear muslins in winter time, and now, 
on April 25th, a man got in with a fur cap. " Is it often 
like this?" I asked the depressed-looking ticket-agent 



Il8 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

at Oued Fodda. " Alas! it has done little else but rain 
for three months," he replied. 

Oran is of little moment after Algiers, although, on 
the other hand, it has a mosque much more charming 
than any in the larger city. You contemplate at leisure 
the plashing fountain and tropical vegetation in the 
semicircular cloister of this mosque, and the blue tiling 
all round its walls; you toil up and down the exces- 
sively steep Rue Philippe, take a refreshment on the 
level Place Kleber, wonder at the inaccessible forts on 
the naked environing crags, and you have finished 
Oran. 

The question of residence, then, stands or falls by 
the attractiveness of Algiers proper. I need not go 
into formal statistics of the thermometer and the details 
that invalids of various sorts should have; all that is 
found in the regular treatises. It is certainly a charm- 
ing flowery climate, where winter is almost abolished. 
In summer it is so hot that the favorite train from 
Algiers to Oran is run at night, only once a week at 
that, and people wait for it. Dr. Bennet asserts that 
in the summer malarial fevers exist there almost every- 
where, in the high mountains as well as on the plains. 
It is much farther away than the Riviera, for instance, 
without corresponding advantages, since the lower 
latitude on the south side of the Mediterranean is 
counterbalanced by the sheltering mountain ranges on 
the north side, and the winter temperature remains 
much the same. I can see how it might be popular 
enough among English people, who in going there are 
not far away from home at the worst. 

But the question for us was whether — besides sepa- 
rating ourselves three or four days further from our 



THE RIVIERA UP AND DOWN ALGERIA II9 

letters — it could accord with our peculiar ideas of thrift 
to transport our household effects such a long journey 
by land and sea, and still have before us the necessity 
of getting out of the country and making the return 
journey northward for the summers. 



CHAPTER X 

SPAIN, AND ESPECIALLY GRANADA 

I HAD had a shrewd idea of my own that the house- 
hunting question would be likely to settle itself as 
soon as we arrived in Spain. 

We were forty-eight hours in coasting to various 
small African ports and then crossing to Malaga. The 
auspices were favorable. This voyage was as smooth 
and delightful as the other had been detestable. The 
process of elimination seemed to be placing our destiny 
there, and I was not at all sorry. I began to see how 
we should have to call our new abode a Castle in Spain, 
and I hoped the humor of this would not be considered 
too wholly threadbare. But, for our purpose, even this 
storied land of enchantment proved disappointing. 
There was a far-away, difficult-of-access feeling about it. 
I did not at once strike the ideal habitation that would 
have offset the expense and remoteness from support. 
Climate is chiefly confined to Andalusia, and there the 
elusive house and garden did not present themselves. 
Suburban life in Spain is very restricted, whether be- 
cause the environs of the cities have not always been 
safe, or the cities themselves have continued large 
enough without need of spreading out, or whether it is 
a mere matter of a sociable taste. 

In the first place, Malaga, from which I had expected 
much, was simply unkempt and ugly, and I got out of 
it with little delay. 

120 



121 



Do you know that, of all the many things people can 
take in this world, advice is often the worst. Instead 
of taking the railroad, I proposed to go up from Malaga 
to Granada by wagon-road, by way of Velez-Malaga, 
Alhama and Gavia la Grande, a country certain to be 
full of picturesque reminiscence. I was dissuaded from 
it by a well-meaning person, a merchant at Malaga. 
The reasons alleged were the roughness of the way and 
impossibility of getting anything to eat. Mind you, not 
having tried it, I can't say it really would have been a 
good thing to do ; but I suspect it would from the happy 
results that befell from just the same sort of an expedi- 
tion a little later. And this eating along the way is 
much a matter of temper and adaptability to novel 
conditions. Where there is nothing for one man, there is 
often plenty for another. For my part, I have never 
let a dinner stand in the way of something better: a 
dinner can be had any day. 

At Granada I found accommodations, not luxurious, 
but sufficient, in a rambling Spanish hotel that may once 
have been palace or convent. At table-d'hote there were 
good wine and excellent food, a great relief from the 
everlasting monotony of French fare. It was in 
the town, in the square of Puerta Real, close to the 
theatre, the shops of the Zacatin, the markets, all the 
characteristic every-day sights. I almost felt sorry for 
the guests at the Washington Irving and the Siete 
Suelos^ the hotels by the Alhambra especially devoted 
to foreign tourists. They sat somewhat disconsolately 
about the doors of their inns, under the damp shade. 
They were separated from the city by the steep hill, 
and half a mile of distance, which at night was shrouded 
in the blackest darkness. 



122 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Granada is gay to the sight even when its balconies 
are not draped with vivid colors, as now, in honor of a 
patron saint. The hangings were generally of some 
plain color, with wide contrasted border. Fancy 
draperies of pure canary, on the balconies of a long 
white house, effulgent in the sun, and, within the bal- 
conies, women all in black. The next one had the 
striped crimson and yellow of the Spanish ensign, and 
dark women in scarlet China shawls. I was surprised 
at the size and elegance of the cafes, for a place of but 
seventy-six thousand inhabitants. It is a late place at 
night, Granada; no rustic going early to bed there. A 
great shopping was in progress till late, in the winding 
Zacatin; the women were to be seen there sitting com- 
fortably down by the counters at their bargaining. 

In dark side-streets the suitors, the novios^ draped in 
majestic, fierce-looking cloaks, stood by the grated 
windows of their lady-loves. If one did not know these 
harmless gentry, he would look to his pistols in dire 
alarm. No singular costume excites surprise at last; 
there are so many. In the principal squares, after 
midnight, plenty of people were still strolling up and 
down, cheap beverages were sold at the little stands, 
ornamented with a full-rigged ship under sail, and the 
newsboys were vending the Madrid evening papers. 
Not a local paper, no indeed, — though, as there is noth- 
ing whatever in them, this is the better accounted for. 
How often have I sighed, '' Don't you know how 
supremely interesting your local journals might be to 
the stranger if you would only fill them up with news of 
the district? " 

But no, only eternal fuss and froth about Boulanger 
and foreign politics ; a bit of serial story ; a page or two of 



SPAIN, AND ESPECIALLY GRANADA I23 

sewing-machine and patent medicine advertisements, — 
not even the human interest of genuine local advertise- 
ments. Change the name, and the same sheet might be 
published as well at Granada, Salamanca, Avignon, or 
Algiers. 

One evening, by candle-light and in the rain, came 
by a most striking pageant, the Virgin de las A?igustias^ 
going back to a certain church from which she had been 
conveyed to the cathedral that morning. The proces- 
sion was not numerous, but what we might call *' very 
select." Well-dressed ladies and officers in brilliant 
uniforms walked in double-file in the mud; grenadiers 
with fixed bayonets pressed back the crowd. The image 
of the Queen of Heaven was robed in cloth of gold with 
a heavy gold crown on her head, and borne on a litter 
with silver handles. The lights vividly illuminated her 
face, which was very real. One might easily have 
taken her for a real queen, with even that slight ex- 
pression of pain and fatigue in the drawn corners of 
the mouth which actual royalty must often wear. The 
throng clamored enthusiastic vivas ! after her precisely 
as they might have done for a popular general or poli- 
tician, and I asked myself in a dazed way what had be- 
come of the masculine skepticism and how it was those 
fine officers were walking there in the mud. 

As to the Cathedral itself it contains many wooden 
effigies of persons carved out and colored with a start- 
ling reality. Ferdinand and Isabella, in armor dam- 
ascened with gold, emerge from history, and become 
almost every-day acquaintances. Nowhere else had I 
ever imagined such a fine, dignified, gratifying sort of 
magnificence as is seen in the tombs of the Royal Chapel. 
Those of the French sovereigns in the ancient abbey of 



124 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Saint Denis are very poor and meagre in comparison. 
These are shut in by lofty iron gratings of rich, ingenious 
design. The tombs are of soft-hued alabaster or ivory- 
like marble. They spread much wider below than above, 
the angles filled by free, graceful Renaissance cherubs 
and saints. It is being king-like, indeed, to be buried 
thus. 

The figures of the illustrious dead lie turned a little 
sideways, thoroughly natural, as if sleeping. Next 
Ferdinand and Isabella are their son Philip the Hand- 
some and Jeanne the Fool, his wife, who went crazy 
on account of his fickleness. She looks pretty and dis- 
tinguished enough here to have kept him faithful. With 
her crown upon her head, her locks flowing free, and 
her graceful garb of chatelaine, she is like the poetic 
figure we conjure up at the name of Tennyson's Elaine. 

I took a long walk up the silver Xenil, begin- 
ning at the Alameda, loveliest of public gardens. — No 
prohibition against picking flowers here; there are 
enough for all. — Again I followed the tumbling Darro, 
and frequented the gypsies, in their rock-cut caverns, on 
the hill over against the Alhambra till I had got a con- 
siderable comprehension of their way of life. My guide- 
book takes pains to say that one should not do it unless 
well accompanied. Perhaps there is some exaggeration 
in this ; at all events I yet survive to tell the tale. Their 
homes are cut in the solid rock, supplemented here and 
there with a trifle of masonry. The chimneys project 
among the cactus on the hillside above. There must 
be a hundred or more of them. This kind of dwelling 
is of very ancient origin and not uncommon in Spain. 
Nor is it as uncomfortable as might be supposed, that 
is to say, when compared with other dwellings of the 



SPAIN, AND ESPECIALLY GRANADA 1 25 

poor. The rock, all ready to hand and moderately 
soft, is easier to cut out into the habitations desired 
than it is to build regular courses. You don't get much 
window light, it is true, since none enters except by a 
small opening or two in front; but then these are not a 
people to put out their fine eyes with too much read- 
ing or writing, nor indeed with work either. A few 
make a semblance of forging and other blacksmith 
work. 

How they jigged, and clapped, and twanged their 
guitars, those graceless, dark-skinned gypsies! And 
how white were the teeth of laughing Enriqueta ! Their 
dance might have succeeded at the Paris Exhibition, 
after those in the Rue du Caire. 

They would tell my fortune, she and her mates. A 
beautiful blonde lady, they said, with blue eyes was sigh- 
ing for me ; and I would win a million pesetas (francs) in 
the lottery. A little more money and they would tell 
me the name of the lady. 

" Vamos ! a little more money, then — her name?" 

" She will be called Quiteria Ramona," whatever that 
combination may mean. 

So be it; it is done. Henceforward, whenever I shall 
meet any Quiteria Ramonas, I shall have to feel that 
my fate is drawing near. 

Of all that I saw in Spain, Granada alone really of- 
fered a temptation to stay. The Alhambra in no way 
fails its great reputation, and it seems as if it would be 
a most comfortable thing to live with. It is the most 
charming of pilgrimage spots, the more so for a slight 
air of neglect and decay ; its surroundings are not kept 
up with an offensive spruceness. I found after my 
rounds had been thoroughly made that the massive un- 



126 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

finished palace of Charles V., in the same enclosure, 
pleased me yet better than the Moorish palace. 

The latter was very daintily-bright, a summer-pavilion 
architecture, but here was something that marked an 
advance in ornament as in civilization. The same 
monarch's chapel, in the Alhambra itself, is especially 
charming. Each of its deep windows, protected with 
an iron cage, is like a small room. Through it you 
have the most entrancing views of garden flowers and 
greenery. 

One must be proud of literature here, since it is the 
genial papers of Washington Irving that have given the 
place its world-wide vogue. I bought a paper copy of 
Irving' s book, done into Spanish, and sat down to renew 
the memories with which it had fascinated me in child- 
hood. Rather pretty in form, it was so poorly bound 
that the leaves began to fall out at once; and it was 
embellished with wretched lithographed plans and views, 
including a portrait of the author. The book-seller 
spoke of Irving simply as "Washington," ignoring the 
rest, and I have no doubt confounded him pretty well 
with the Father of his Country. I did not feel that I 
knew the Alhambra well enough even when I had fol- 
lowed all its walls and outlying bastions, plan in hand. 
There remains a portion of its old domain devoted to pri- 
vate uses. A part of the hill has a few villas, with lovely 
orange-and-myrtle-embellished terraces, looking down 
over the winding Xenil. The British vice-consul had a 
bit of ground and a white mirador there. I saw the 
property of the Calderon family, a delicious garden of 
great extent, even finer than the Generaliffe, — a garden 
worthy of royalty. On the highest point is a wood 
almost in the natural state. Down the slope thence 



SPAIN, AND ESPECIALLY GRANADA 1 27 

pours, through embowering foliage, a stream which has 
been brought by an aqueduct from the Sierra Nevada, 
to feed a lake. On the lake were some artificial islands, 
a bit of artificial ruined castle, and a decaying boat, 
in the form of a swan, that Lohengrin might have used. 
Lower down, a formal palace-garden with fountains, 
statues, and clipped hedges, and the largest palm-tree 
ever seen, commands delightful views of the Alhambra 
close by, and down over the distant Vega. Lower 
still the hillside is cut into narrow terraces in charming 
cultivation. 

Ah, had we but this for ours ! but see now what destiny 
does. The owner is a young bachelor much given to 
far-distant travel. One day he packs his valise for 
Brazil or for Mexico, another day for Jerusalem, and 
another day for Timbuctoo. But he never packs it 
here, alas! nor for here. Some proprietors come only 
in the summer season, for it is in summer, cooled by the 
breezes from the snow-capped mountains, that Granada 
is the most agreeable; but he comes neither summer 
nor winter; not from one year's end to another does he 
ever set foot in this earthly paradise. The house, plain 
white and spacious, not imposing like the gardens, had 
been opened but once in many years. But it was not 
for rent nor was there anything else like it to rent. 

I find in my notebook a plan of one of the apartments 
I saw offered in town. Not a house, mind you, but only 
an apartment. It was in a small plaza precisely under 
the Alhambra tower of La Vela. At the left, as you 
faced it, was an old church, a little bridge across the 
Darro, and the route by which you would go up among 
the gypsies in their hillside caverns. It was a third 
piso^ or story, which means, however, that you went up 



128 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

only two pairs of stairs; the ground floor being counted 
a story here, as it is not in France. It was in a very 
wide, brilliantly white house with an azotea^ or loggia^ 
on top, balconies to every window, and, at the moment, 
yellow draperies hanging from the balconies, for the 
festival. I much fear me that it was to the north once 
more, and the Alhambra hill shut off the sun in winter. 
But to look at, merely as a type, that makes no differ- 
ence. That it was supposed to be warm enough in 
winter is inferred from the fact that there were no fire- 
places except in the kitchen. There were eleven rooms, 
plain and large, brick-floored and calcimined. The 
doors were all panelled in a peculiarly elaborate way. 
One good idea, I thought, was closing the upper panels 
of the closet doors with only a pretty lattice-work, for 
the freer admission of air. In the kitchen, the swift 
water of the Darro was pumped into a reservoir con- 
sisting of a Forty-Thieves-like earthen jar. The chief 
characteristic of the place was its vast, labyrinthine ex- 
tent. It had three courts of various sizes, and a pro- 
portionate amount of corridor to get around them. 
Most of the bedrooms received their light only from these 
courts, and were what we should call "dark rooms," 
though their cool obscurity may have been grateful 
enough in fervid summer. 

All this, a smiling, grizzled proprietor assured me, 
would cost just one hundred and forty-five duros (dol- 
lars) a year. 



CHAPTER XI 
Ole—Mu-las ! — stage-coaching it to old jaen 

There was a diligencia^ or stage, running to Jaen, 
sixty miles to the northward, and from there a branch 
railway could be taken to the junction of Espeluy on 
the main line. It was by no means the most expedi- 
tious route for Seville, and, indeed, would necessitate a 
good deal of going back on my track before I got to 
Madrid; but a long stage-ride in the heart of Spain, 
and especially through the mountain district of Granada, 
seemed worth making even at some sacrifice. 

I had taken my ticket some days in advance. It 
certified that, in consideration of the sum of sixty reals 
paid, I was entitled to seat No. i, in the top front com- 
partment, and to have about forty pounds of baggage 
carried free. Sixty reals^ put in that way, seems a 
rather large sum, but since the real is but five cents, it 
reduces itself to $3. I was called at four a.m., while 
the stage did not start till six. The manager said he 
was not certain but I was going to take the train, in- 
stead, and he wanted to be on the safe side. It was the 
safe side for him, but, as to me, such a superabun- 
dance of safety did not call forth by any means my 
warmest words of gratitude. 

My ticket read six o'clock en punta^ — sharp, — and it 
was in fact six o'clock to the minute when our start was 
made. I found a vehicle somewhat of the old Concord 
9 129 



130 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

coach pattern, yellow and black, with Jaen Mail, 
" Correo de Jaen^ " on the panels. It had numerous com- 
partments, of most of which I came to know something 
in the course of the journey. In the first place it had 
the coupe^ high up, which I had chosen for the sake of 
the view; then, a couple of steps lower, the seats for 
the driver and guard; then a forward space inside, 
glazed something like the front of a hansom cab; and 
finally a rear space with hardly any windows at all. In 
this last rode a melancholy man in brown, so shadowy 
vague, so apart from us even when we got down at the 
relays, that I don't count him, but figure that I travelled 
with but one other passenger. This fellow-passenger 
climbed up with his wraps into the coupe. The sturdy 
middle-aged driver, in a round jacket and dark sash, 
finished piling the heavy luggage on top and covered it 
over with a tarpaulin. 

Hardly were we off when I found that the fixed wooden 
hood over the coiLpe came so low that, what with the 
broad backs of the driver and guard filling the rest of 
the space, very little view was to be had. 

We went at a lively pace out past the Plaza de Toros ; 
it was lucky I had so well seen the suburbs of the town 
already, for I should have got but scant acquaintance 
with them now. I began to repine under this; it would 
never do. My travelling-companion recommended that 
we should pay a certain supplement and descend into 
the glazed forward compartment. He was a very 
pleasant gentleman, of Barcelona. Here our amicable 
relations first commenced. We did so ; but found that 
the contracted build of the coach was never calculated 
for sight-seeing. The driver's box cut off everything 
in front; the side windows showed only bits of hedges 



STAGE-COACHING IT TO OLD JAEN I3I 

and olive orchards; the whole upward part of the pros- 
pect was invisible. 

A new effort at relief resulted, for me, in buying the 
guard's seat, beside the driver. This at last proved 
satisfactory. We were far out beyond all vestiges of 
Granada by this time, and one of those lonesome atalayas^ 
from which the Moorish watchmen had been wont to 
signal the invasion of their fertile land by Christian 
forays, was close beside us, inaccessible on its crag as 
an eagle's nest. No doubt I should be expected to say 
something in this wild country of the roughness of the 
way; but very far from it; it is probably the United 
States that has the worst roads in the world. The roads 
here were capital, hard, wide, and of very easy grades. 
One sees how the goodness of European wagon roads 
may have accounted for the slow development of rail- 
ways. At intervals were small houses occupied by a 
peon caminero^ who, with a lettered band about his hat, 
was keeping the route in repair. Two operatic-look- 
ing gendarmes with rifles and cocked hats occasionally 
drew up on either side of the way and saluted the 
diligencia. 

The pace became yet more rattling. We had set 
out with six strong, swift mules, but after the first relay 
the wheelers were white horses, with fine legs and feet 
that denoted a strain of Arabian blood. In front, on 
the off leader, rode a postilion, a gallant, handsome 
young fellow in a scarlet sash with a horn slung over 
his shoulder. He tooted his horn and cracked a short 
whip round his head ; the driver swung and cracked his 
long-lashed whip with reports like a pistol-shot, but for 
effect only : he never touched the animals with it. It 
was most exhilarating. Ole mulas I The bells on the 



132 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

harness jingled; we went on at a grand trot, much more 
than a trot, a veritable train d^enfer. 

Oh, the lovely bright morning! which had threatened 
to rain but didn't. Oh, the clear bracing air, the sun, 
the mountains, the historic Vega! the early mists cling- 
ing in the valleys! Oh, the joy of life! The driver 
tried, together with his perpetual oles^ something like 
an Alpine yodel upon his flying steeds. 

" Ole ! Ole — mu-las I — alyu — alyeu — aley-ee-o! — yuh ! " 
— I spell out his cries as best I may. It was well worth 
coming for indeed. 

We continually hear that the South is gay and the 
North is grave. But we hear the same thing of North 
and South in every country, no matter what the latitude. 
It is said in France ; in Italy, in Spain ; it is said in Mexi- 
co ; and no doubt too in Guatemala and Nicaragua. To 
my mind it is a matter of individuals rather than races, 
and I would like to contrast with my taciturn Andalusian 
stage-driver many a rollicking one in Maine. He was 
taciturn but not gloomy ; on the contrary I think he 
was well contented with himself. He told me, mono- 
syllabically, that a good horse or mule could be bought 
here for $70, and that one of his was mucho perro^ liter- 
ally "much dog,'* that is, not good for very much. He 
said Cara Ancha — Wide Face — was the other famous 
bull-fighter that was coming to Granada with Mazzan- 
tini on Sunday, and not Lagartijo. When I asked him 
where all the laborers in the fields were — for there was 
not a soul in sight — he only turned and smiled, a trifle 
disdainfully I think. He improved with the present of 
a good cigar ; but he had probably seen very few foreign- 
ers and may have regarded me much as an honest Maine 
driver might a German or Italian immigrant who should 



STAGE-COACHING IT TO OLD JAEN I33 

get up beside him and try to draw him into intelligent 
conversation in bad English. 

Our first pause was at an Estanco Nacional, a place 
where tobacco was sold by government permit. There 
were four relays for changing the team, and all of these 
were mere ventas^ poor, bare solitary inns, where it did 
not look as if one would be at all comfortable if he had 
to stay over-night. There were some half-ruined farm 
buildings, and sheep and dogs about. A russet mail-bag 
was generally thrown down — a very thin one, be it re- 
marked. In the country at large there was no vestige 
of old Moorish houses — there were no houses at all, no 
castles, no fences, no inhabitants. At half-past eight 
we began climbing the foot-hills, and the way grew 
gradually steeper. At nine we got out and walked, to 
ease the team, and I stretched my legs up to the top of 
a veritable Swiss-looking pass. These ups and downs 
were continual. From amid rocks and starveling bushes 
we look down at the road winding ribbon-like through 
a cultivated district below. There were some tough 
black-and-tan-colored goats in the mountain. I recol- 
lect Ampotiza, which we left at our right, as a gray 
mediaeval hamlet, such as one of the old masters might 
have put in the background of his pictures. We did 
meet a train of patient little donkeys carrying charcoal, 
and their masters were on their backs too, sitting side- 
ways and kicking them in the ribs with their heels. 
Then there were some droves of black swine and their 
herders in the fields, a trace of an out-of-door thresh- 
ing-floor, and an occasional, a very occasional, plough- 
man. 

But now the continued glare of the white roads began 
to affect my eyes unpleasantly. The edge of the coupe 



134 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

hood, too, Still came down so low that I had been able 
neither to sit up comfortably straight nor to keep my 
hat on, the latter being replaced by a white handker- 
chief knotted bandit fashion. I descended once more, 
therefore, and joined my Barcelona friend within; and it 
was in this way I heard at last the absence of laborers 
from the fields accounted for. There is little else but 
olives in the district; the harvest of these is gathered 
but once a year or even two years; the hands come and 
pick them for the great proprietors and go away again, 
and that is the end of it. 

At noon we halted ten minutes at Campillo de Arenas, 
a forlorn little village of something over 4,000 inhabi- 
tants, solidly built of rubble-stone in the customary 
way. There was no inn, but only a dingy country 
store with some very dry groceries from which to choose 
the eatables to take with us. I left my companion to 
attend to that, as being the more experienced in such 
matters, while I took a brief stroll about the place. 
When our luncheon was spread out upon our knees in 
the stage, it had a very uninviting look. We had paid 
the price of a good breakfast each — for the poor part 
of the country is not cheap — for some sections of ham, 
sausage, and cheese, all provender for which, as a 
rule, I have little liking, and a loaf of unfermented 
bread, which looked as though it could not be di- 
vided with anything less than a stone-mason's chisel. 
But now, see the folly of trusting to appearances. 
The ham, cured in the district, was sweeter and ten- 
derer than any other I ever ate; the sausage was in- 
fused with an unusually delicate and distinguished 
flavor; the cheese was a very mild variety, made of 
goat's milk; the adamantine-looking bread was excel- 



STAGE-COACHING IT TO OLD JAEN 1 35 

lent. Each successive article, as I took it up with re- 
pugnance, proved a new surprise. We washed the 
whole down with a red wine of Valdepenas, which, 
though tasting a trifle of the wine-skin from which it 
had been drawn into our bottle, was excellent also. 

This was an experience to make the spirits rise. My 
companion was a man of education and taste, a friend 
of the distinguished poet, Balaguer. He told me some- 
thing of his business and himself. He said deprecatingly 
that he belonged, as his name showed, to the petite 
noblesse. We felicitated ourselves upon our good luck 
and the day we were having. And over our cigars we 
moralized upon how simple are the real wants of man, 
how much too civilized the world has become, and how 
much oftener we would like to escape it as now. My 
friend regretted that we had not met at Granada earlier, 
for then we could have arranged to make the journey 
on horseback together, instead of by stage. That 
would have been a still better ideal. 

We traversed a profound little valley, rattled through 
a tunnel a hundred feet long, in the natural rock, the 
Puerta de Arenas, caught sight of the mineral springs 
of Jabalcuz, and entered Jaen at three o'clock. It is 
on a rocky slope. An enormous old castle, as large 
as the Alhambra, rises upon a precipitous crag above 
the main part of it. The cathedral, once a Moorish 
mosque, and now in perfect preservation, makes a 
great mass by itself to the left. Cathedral, old 
town, and jagged rocks, all group into those bold 
combinations that painters, and especially etchers, 
love. Jaen is a city of 25,000 people, but its rudely- 
paved streets have the vacant look of those of a 
country village. In certain ways it recalled, too, such 



136 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

old Italian cities as Mantua. The diligence office is the 
great centre of life and bustle. I bought delicious 
oranges in the market and saw peasant pottery that 
would make the fortune of a collector. I tried to buy 
photographs of the monuments, but there were none; it 
had not become sophisticated to that point. At the 
cathedral a gorgeous beadle in scarlet, with a mace, was 
just bowing out a bishop, in purple and fine linen, and a 
handful of other ecclesiastics, who had been saying 
some sort of service in the rich, dark old oak choir, 
though there was no other spectator than myself. This 
most attractive cathedral has an esplanade before it, 
with massive stairs going down to the narrow lower 
streets, and an archbishop's palace on one side, grand 
enough for the scenery of the grandest opera. If it 
were not that there is so much picturesqueness in Spain, 
I should think all the world would want to go and see 
Jaen, instead of leaving it so exclusively to me. 

The journey thence by the branch railroad to Espeluy, 
where the land belongs chiefly to the Duke of Medi- 
naceli, is no long affair. 

But I had to wait from five o'clock to ten, at the for- 
lorn little junction of Espeluy. I walked far into the 
country. Not a house, not a man, not a sign of life of 
any sort. In the dark evening, I went over to a shanty 
cafe, the Cantina Andaluz, which with a few freight 
cars on a side-track, and the little station, constituted 
the place. There was a group of persons in the garden, 
a family group, I hardly know who, it all passed so 
obscurely, in the dark. A girl had a guitar and a 
younger sister urged her to sing. 

'' Anda^ Maria! anda ! ajida-a-a/" pressed the little 
one, impatient at the other's reluctance, — "Oh, do go 



STAGE-COACHING IT TO OLD JAEN I37 

on, Maria ! go on, I tell you! What are you hanging 
back for?" 

Then Maria "went on," and the sitters-around joined 
in the refrains, and some also tried various airs on their 
own account, not always knowing very well either the 
words or the tune. One pretty song the vague Maria 
sang was this: — 

" I am not happy either with you or without you ; 
for when I am with you, you torment me past all en- 
durance; and when I am without you I die of longing. 
So I am not happy either with you or without you." 

The songs almost invariably begin with a long-drawn, 
quavering cry, or whine, and continue in a monotonous, 
minor key, fascinating and essentially Spanish. I 
thought the feminine voices soft and pleasing, which is 
unusual, for the Spanish woman's throat often has a 
harsh quality, a roughness about it. The same thing 
may be noticed of the Spanish blood in Mexico and 
Cuba. Admixture with the Indian stock softens it away 
to the sweetness of speech that belongs to this latter. 



CHAPTER XII 
CORDOVA, SEVILLE, AND ABOUT PRETTY SPANISH WOMEN 

At Cordova, a herd of black bulls was crossing the 
old Moorish bridge, while peasants, laborers, and traffic 
were backed up into the gateway called la Puerta del 
Puente to give them an uninterrupted right of way. 

The dust flew, the herders swore, the fierce bulls went 
on, over the coffee-colored Guadalquivir, the pent-up 
business resumed its course. A small knot of working- 
girls, going over to their toil in the suburb, took up 
their march with the rest. 

"' Adios !'' — good-by! one of them tossed back, 
laughing, over her shoulder, to the lean, sallow, leathern- 
visaged employee of the octroi which took toll of all 
market produce at the gate. '^ Adios^" she tossed 
back, in laughing mockery, as if the sole purpose of the 
stoppage had been to make a little visit with him; and 
the group all giggled, as they went their way. 

" Adios, herijiosa ! " the man called after her, with a 
good deal of respectful sincerity in his compliment. 

" He7'mosa " means fair or beautiful, and his description 
was certainly well bestowed. This was a beautiful 
Spanish girl without manner of doubt. Rather large 
than medium of stature, with that something majestic 
about her which belongs to peasant simplicity of cos- 
tume, she had the fine dark eyes that seem to say every- 
thing even when they say nothing. She had the very 

138 



CORDOVA, SEVILLE, AND PRETTY SPANISH WOMEN 1 39 

dark skin of countries baked by the sun, a smooth skin, 
too, easily capable of the blush that mantled it now per- 
haps at her own forwardness. 

She was perfectly well made in all those points in 
which feminine perfection is outwardly visible, and from 
her gait might be divined the small foot and arched in- 
step which have led poets, from Byron down, to institute 
a comparison between the Spanish woman and the Arab 
steed. There was no doubt Moorish blood in this young 
denizen of a place where caliphs for centuries held sway 
— perhaps even an unusual supply of it. Not that the 
Moorish women themselves have any such gait, they 
merely waddle about in incommodious trousers, but let 
us concede that it may be attained by some crossing 
of the breed. 

I think the beauty of the bridge had no other ac- 
quaintance with the man at the gate than such as her 
own high spirits just now gave her. She must have 
been somewhere about sixteen and he was grizzled and 
middle-aged. Naturally girls of her station are not held 
to so strict an etiquette as the higher class. They re- 
ceive many bold oles of admiration from chance ob- 
servers. 

Well, she had a red rose in her hair, and she went 
her way laughing, across the old bridge, so old that it 
had been Roman even before it became Arabic and then 
Spanish. And so — keeping, I trust, a safe distance from 
the feet of the bulls — she disappeared forever, one of 
those momentary glimpses from which the traveller often 
parts with a real pang; a touch of young, warm, breath- 
ing modern life that derived the greater zest from its 
ancient setting. It was in springtime and in Cordova 
of Andalusia. 



I40 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

I found myself charmed with the time-worn pictu- 
resque bits In the small streets all about the great cathe- 
dral, that was once a mosque and still is far more a 
mosque than a Christian church. I was delighted with 
the vast court, planted with long lines of blossoming 
perfumed orange-trees, before the cathedral — and rather 
disillusioned in the cathedral itself. In truth, of all the 
innumerable columns in that vaunted interior you can 
see but a very few at a time; and the red and white 
principle of architecture, the streak of fat and streak of 
lean, has been partly spoiled by too numerous imita- 
tions. You have to think of various Turkish baths, 
and of that Fourth Avenue, New York, church which 
some irreverent parishioner has dubbed the Church of 
the Holy Zebra. 

Cordova was delicious and typically Spanish — and as 
a place to live in, I never even once thought of it; fori 
had Seville before me and, after Seville, I did not come 
back to it. 

The day after Cordova, I was at Seville, the Seville 
which it is tradition to rave about as the very home of 
grace and beauty. It was first visible on a distant 
height, like a city in a fairy tale. The brown plain 
over which we approached it was destitute of houses. 
Tracts of it here and there were covered thick with 
a small species of blue wild flower that called to mind 
the lagoons of the sea. We followed the course of 
the Guadalquivir, a sizeable river not unlike the Con- 
necticut in general aspect. As we drew nearer, oranges 
and lemons began to glow among the thicker vegeta- 
tion, and the famous tower of the Giralda was seen 
plainly rising above the mass of buildings. 

Seville, within, was a congeries of narrow, irregular 



CORDOVA, SEVILLE, AND PRETTY SPANISH WOMEN 141 

Streets of rather plain houses, chiefly white, provided 
liberally with balconies, chiefly green. The streets 
were much protected by awnings against the summer 
heat; but, on the other hand, many of the balconies 
were made into glazed mtradores, covered sun-boxes, 
for refuge in the chilly days of winter. Every woman 
wore a rose in her hair, and came idly out on her balcony 
as often as possible. Great heaps of yellow oranges 
glowed in the market-place, with a general effect like 
that of our heaps of yellow pumpkins in autumn; and 
how the red roses bloomed in the beautiful old gardens 
of the Alcazar, that were made for the Moorish kings. 

Though Seville is twice the size of Granada, I should 
estimate it, as a residence place, considerably less than 
half as attractive. This was the upshot of my re- 
searches. Owing to the universal practice of white- 
washing the antiquity out of buildings, the effect of it 
is new and modern. The most that could be said of 
the second /W(?, or floor, of seven rooms, I saw, under 
the aegis of the Giralda, or of the one that had a view 
of the delightful Alcazar, or of that third one opposite 
the rich-sculptured city hall, or Ayuntamiento, was 
that they were neat, commonplace, inoffensive. They 
had no positive reasons for them. 

The dearest, reduced to American money, would have 
been about two hundred and twenty-five dollars a year. 
There is a curious way in that country of estimating 
rent by the day. Thus, if you ask, " How much is it ? " 
they will reply "Twelve reals a day," or more or less 
as the case may be, leaving you to make your own cal- 
culations. As the real is so small, you are forever boil- 
ing down magnificent totals to a modest residuum. 

In a general way, you may count on having a highly 



142 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

presentable apartment for four hundred dollars, — this 
in the large, expensive cities, including Madrid. Per- 
haps even one of the famous houses of Seville, with 
patio^ or half-Moorish courtyard, could be had for that, 
— if one of them could ever be found vacant. The cost 
of provisions cannot vary greatly from what it is in 
France. In servants' wages there is a notable reduc- 
tion. You can have an excellent cook for thirty-five 
pesetas (francs), and a maid-of-all-work for fifteen or 
twenty. 

Why can I not truthfully report that all the women 
of Seville and of Spain were as beautiful as the girl at 
Cordova? There is, after all, much luck in these mat- 
ters, and if I did not see in Seville the full display of 
female loveliness that one is almost positively bound 
to see there — it is perhaps that I was born, as I have 
often thought, under an unpropitious star. 

Almost the first thing after my arrival, I chanced to 
meet the women coming out from the great government 
tobacco-factory. Everybody speaks of that sight: 
read De Amicis and read Marie Bashkirtseff. For my 
part I remarked many and many a pale face, plenty of 
drawn and ugly features, and figures without the least 
distinction, the result of unhygienic conditions, sickness, 
hard work, poverty. They all wore red roses in their 
hair. Red roses were the rule that month, in Andalusia. 
First, in going up to Granada from Malaga, young 
women had showed themselves at the small stations, 
thus adorned. If brunette faces peered through the 
shrubbery like another kind of fruit, or if they sat sew- 
ing — a group of young tailoresses for instance — in open 
doors just off the street, or partly hid behind a curtain 
on their balconies, the red rose for their tresses was 



CORDOVA, SEVILLE, AND PRETTY SPANISH WOMEN 143 

never forgotten. More rarely one fastened her mantilla 
at the breast with a bunch of them. 

Even among the ladies of a much higher grade than 
the tobacco girls, among those, for example, who issued 
forth from an entertainment given by a group of fash- 
ionable young men, at the private bull-ring, one Sunday 
afternoon, and those who drove in the fine equipages 
on the Paseo by the Guadalquivir, there were often 
very bad complexions and even moustaches like a 
grenadier's. But all of them, even these, were very 
Spanish. They still flaunted the Spanish fan; they still 
wore, thank heaven, the graceful mantilla, though its 
days are numbered; and some of the beautiful car- 
riages were drawn by mules bedecked with colored 
trappings. 

Spanish women are rather picturesque than beautiful. 
It is the painter effects to which they lend themselves 
insteadof their actual good looks that accounts for much 
of the enthusiasm about them. It is a land where 
they are not afraid of vivid colors. Crimson and yellow 
drape not only the balconies, but the backs of the dark- 
haired women, in neckerchiefs, or shawls wrought with 
gay patterns of flowers or birds. Yonder maid, in the 
suburb of Triana, wears a China shawl of brilliant yel- 
low embroidered in green and scarlet, and stands idly 
awaiting somebody in the doorway of a low house, daz- 
zling white in the sunlight. From a window tumbles 
out a perfect cascade of gorgeous scarlet cactus blos- 
soms. And it is all in no way tawdry; you no more 
think of tawdriness in connection with it than in a 
humming-bird, an oriole, or a bird of paradise. 

Society in Spanish towns is retiring, at least from the 
stranger; and I was told of an English family, drawn by 



144 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the natural beauties of the place, who had spent several 
years in Seville and had not made a single acquaintance. 
Of course there is no saying that the fault may not have 
been on their own side. Native authorities certainly give 
a pleasant account of the social doings at Seville. What 
with all their tertullias, or informal reunions, their din- 
ners — no, not very many dinners — but their balls, pic- 
nics, and rowing-parties, life is not too serious. And in 
spite of the Moorish tradition of the close supervision 
of women, there would appear to be often almost as free 
and merry goings-on among the young people as if it 
were America. Then, after a sufficient term of coquetry 
and gayety, the maidens are said to settle down and be- 
come quite model wives. 

Valdes treats of this elucidatingly in his " Sister San 
Sulpicio." I wish I had had the charming book when I 
was passing through there, as a guide to what was 
doing in the closed houses. His hero, wildly in love 
with, and engaged to, an extremely pretty and vivacious 
girl, goes to consult a friend of his, a man of the world. 
He has been smitten with a dread, such as has no 
doubt taken possession of other nervous lovers also, to 
wit, that his affianced, while possessed of every fascina- 
tion now during the period of laughing maidenhood, 
may not, on account of the very brightness of her spirit, 
be able to stand the test of long-enduring, prosaic 
matrimony. 

"Captain Villa," said he, "the women here have 
more comeliness and passion, as well as a livelier in- 
telligence than those of my part of the world, up in the 
north. They know how to love, that is evident; but — 
but do you not think there is some danger that they 
may make better sweethearts than wives ? " 



CORDOVA, SEVILLE, AND PRETTY SPANISH WOMEN I45 

The Captain, on the contrary, takes up the defence of 
the woman of Seville with a zest. 

"She is warm and she is lively, it is true," he says, 
" but she is not vain. The fire of her nature converts 
itself, after marriage, into domestic tenderness and de- 
votion. She will demand to be loved, not to be ex- 
travagantly arrayed. Luxury does not turn the head 
of a woman in Seville as elsewhere, and poverty is 
not considered ridiculous. The mantilla equalizes all 
classes. Distinctions of rank are not felt here. A 
young girl from among those most favored in birth and 
fortune will associate on even terms with one who may 
have no more to^look to than the modest salary of a 
struggling father. It is said that there still is some- 
thing of the Moorish odalisque about the Sevillian 
woman, but I tell you that with one who demands 
nothing but fondness of her husband on his daily 
return to his home, life cannot well be other than very 
facile and sweet. And possibly the women of your 
section, more demure on the surface, more circumspect 
or timid in manner, are really less to be trusted than 
ours." 

Ah, blessed Seville! ah, thrice happy homes of Seville! 
if this picture of female perfection have the truth that 
is asserted with such positiveness and charm. 

That inveterate Paris boulevardier^ Aurelien Scholl, af- 
firms that -it takes Italian women a year to become a 
Parisienne^ a Spanish woman three years, an English 
woman a couple of generations, and a German woman 
five,— the Russian being already born a Parisienne. 
There is some play of national prejudice in this state- 
ment, but it shows that a certain fixity of character 
without degenerating into rooted obstinacy is to be prop- 



146 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

erly ascribed to the Spanish woman. There must be a 
fund of gravity even in the lightest heads, for Spain is 
a country that has always taken life seriously. It has 
had plenty of heroic, even if sometimes mistaken, ideals, 
and personal inconvenience has never stood in their 
way. 

The fact is there are none too many Parisiennes even 
in Paris. That is a type that flourishes somewhat in- 
discriminately everywhere. That particular union of 
intelligence, grace, coquetry, and taste in attire, that 
gayety of character, with well-meaning principles, that 
yet must not be too much tempted — such a combination 
is a female inheritance only awaiting favorable oppor- 
tunities to develop in any country. 

But the more one journeys, the more he is inclined 
to think there are no fixed national types, especially in 
womankind, but only varying individuals of the universal 
type. You find light Spanish women as well as dark ; 
reserved, silent ones as well as gay; spirits bustling in 
the march of progress, as well as those who sit under 
the shade of archaic traditions. The sweet young 
Queen Regent of Spain, with the baby king in her arms, 
was a portrait which hung in nearly all the public halls 
and was an influence that was strengthening the domestic 
virtues in private life. On the other side, no more en- 
ergetic worker could be found, even in energetic Ameri- 
ca, than the novelist and essayist Emilia Pardo Bazan. 
She was devoting herself to the emancipation of woman 
" from her fetters of iron and gold and jewels." She 
welcomed most sagely to her banner every woman who 
could contribute to the cause, not sentimental twaddle 
and ridiculous bombast, but deeds of tangible worth. 
And, to show that it is still conservative Spain, she 



147 

professes herself not a radical, not even a republican, 
but a monarchist of the most uncompromising sort. 

I cannot help thinking there was something of the 
Parisienne even in St. Theresa, an ideal who still very 
greatly influences the women of Spain. Born in Avila 
where the winter is long and hard and there is no spring, 
she threw the sunshine of a southern nature over that 
stern district which has been termed " a land of stones 
and saints." Never having been taught, she yet wrote 
a literary style that Juan Valera, of the Academy, de- 
clares a model. 

"Above all," she used to say, " let our sanctity never 
befog our brains; no one has ever had too much intelli- 
gence." 

Amid the austerities of the convents she founded, she 
always permitted them one cold, sweet sort of luxury, of 
a kind I most thoroughly indorse: they were placed 
where they commanded a lovely point of view. She 
was beautiful, she was always gay; she was full of a 
heavenly sort of comrnon-sense. Saint if she were, there 
was still something very lovable about her, in the hu- 
man way. And so I am not afraid of the connection if 
I cite so close to her name yet one more of those poetic 
little songs of the people, showing their ardent ap- 
preciation of their womenkind, which I heard, — to the 
accompaniment of guitars and castanets and clapping 
hands and loud ole's — 'the last evening of my stay at 
Seville: 

" From the heavens a star has been lost. In the place 
it was wont to be it no longer appears. But lo! in thy 
chamber instead it dwells. It shines in thy radiant 
eyes. From the heavens a star has been lost but with 
thee it is found. 



148 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

" More than roses, my brown girl, thy dear eyes en- 
chant me. More than all the flowers thy eyes delight 
me. Ah, truly I fall ill of their splendor, I am ill 
with their glances, and to the hospital of San Augostin 
I must go away." 



CHAPTER XIII 

TO MADRID, AND WHEN YOU GET THERE 

From Seville to Madrid is a long step, in every 
sense. The prodigious variations of climate raise an 
everlasting difference between them. The high central 
table-land is the very antipodes of Andalusia. On the 
high central plateau, no oranges nor myrtles, no de- 
licious gardens of Lindaraja nor of Maria Pradilla; 
barren La Mancha is fit only for the melancholy shep- 
herdesses, the Lucindas and Camillas, who used to air 
their misfortunes there. Chill winds blow and there are 
no red roses in their hair. 

Further north, the vast treeless, grass-grown, Scan- 
dinavian-looking plain, with snow-mountains on its 
borders, by which Madrid is approached, is less sterile 
than La Mancha; it is without the stone-heaps and 
dark, aggressive-looking windmills of Don Quixote's 
country, at Argamasilla, but it is only a trifle less lone- 
some and forlorn. Herds of large black bulls draw 
attention to the national sport. Finally, at Getarfe — a 
station quite furbished up, as if it might contain the 
country-places of prosperous city people — you see a 
notch in the plain, and through the notch, down-hill, 
you make out a great expanse of red roofs varied with 
New York-looking domes and steeples, which is Madrid. 
Somehow, the grand snow-peaks are never visible in 
the city itself. 

149 



150 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

"Oh, De Amicis! " one exclaims, at Madrid, in invol- 
untary reproach, for is it not De Amicis who has writ- 
ten the most glowing accounts of it — " Oh, De Amicis! " 

And *' Oh, De Amicis! " one especially exclaims in the 
famous Puerta del Sol. It is true we have been told, 
in a general way, that Madrid is new, and not to expect 
too much of it. But, after all, a few hundred years is 
a very respectable antiquity, and our own fancies, even 
if baseless, are stronger than descriptions — -which makes 
me think it may be quite useless to read any descriptive 
writing at all, except, of course, this. Who would not 
have expected of a plaza which calls itself the Gate of 
the Sun, a gate of some kind — probably a fine, ancient 
one, with the sculptured horses of the sun prancing 
upon it? There is no gate at all. There is nothing 
but a great ellipse of monotonous five-story buildings, 
chiefly hotels, the rendezvous of numerous horse-car 
lines. But let us be just: you see also a large govern- 
ment building stuccoed and colored red, with white em- 
bellishments; and you see a fountain, a large, full 
basin, perfectly plain, where you can wash your hands 
if you like — a very good idea. There are even no 
splendid cafes. The most prominent object is the sign 
of the New York Life Insurance Company. Nor are 
all the hotels models of elegance and comfort. I en- 
tered one of them, with a rather fine-sounding name, 
which advertised in one of the journals reasonable prices. 
Its rates might well have been reasonable, for it 
was as down-at-the-heel, raggedly carpeted, and malo- 
dorous as the most lamentably cheap boarding-house. 
How this could have been, behind so respectable a front 
and in so famous a square, I do not understand. It is 
true there is always a great lot of people in the Puerta 



TO MADRID, AND WHEN YOU GET THERE 151 

del Sol, a rush and stir of life, quite on the American 
plan; but if an Italian traveller like De Amicis, coming 
from the very essence of color and picturesqueness at 
home, could like this, I am sure he would like America 
much more. Would that he would come and stand on 
our street-corners in New York and Chicago, and write 
of us in the vivid style in which he has treated of Madrid 
and Constantinople. It is pleasant not to have to 
disparage America for once, and I do not hesitate in the 
least to say that Union Square is more attractive 
than the Puerta del Sol. 

There is a good deal of New Yorkey architecture, of 
the common sort, in Madrid; that is to say, the tall 
brick tenement-houses with stone "trimmings," on the 
balconies of which the family-wash is hung out to the 
breeze. To hang out the washing thus is the custom, 
however, even in much higher circles. I saw it dis- 
played on the houses bounding the garden which skirts 
the royal palace. I was often tempted to think that 
excessive practicality was the trait of the modern Span- 
iard, and that the feeling that inspired the rich old 
architecture, with its color, its exuberant yet massive 
forms, and its fine, deep shadows, had quite gone out 
of him. Perhaps he has been so weighed upon by old 
traditions that it is a relief to cast them all off for a 
time and even dance upon them with a sort of barbaric 
glee. The noble Duke of Medinaceli has a brick palace, 
at the corner of San Geronimo Street, which might be 
the merest manufacturing establishment; and from the 
shabby brown walls of that of the Duke of Villahermosa, 
across the way, the stucco is peeling off in patches. 
The Duke of Montpensier's palace, San Telmo, with 
its fine, semi-tropical gardens, along the Paseo, at 



152 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Seville, had rather formed my ideal for those of the 
modern sort. If there were no more than this of castles 
in Spain, one might as well build them in any other 
country. The public buildings have their large royal 
escutcheons, which carry one back to the ancient tradi- 
tions, but they have little else. The marked Dutch and 
German influence, in their belfries and roofs, was always 
a surprise ; can I have heard it mentioned before ? The 
Low Countries, so maltreated by Philip and Alva, took 
their revenge in setting the fashion in architecture. 
Philip brought back the pattern of their roofs even for 
his stern granite vagary the Escorial. 

From afar off and long in advance I had thought very 
seriously of Madrid as a possible home. But it was 
soon evident that Madrid, for all its Velasquezes in 
the Royal Gallery and for all its fine ntvf paseos or 
boulevards, could not be made to square with our ideas. 
I had tasted the charms of genial southern climate, and 
here everybody wore his winter overcoat in the middle 
of May. Why then detail all its inadequacy ? It is so 
cold that plain wooden stairways, neither painted, waxed, 
nor carpeted, wood too I fancy being something of a 
luxury, are found in many most respectable homes, where 
you would rather have expected to find stone or marble. 
If we should live at Madrid at all, I should prefer to be 
out in the fine new part of town, say on the broad Alcala 
Street. The houses are often built in crescents, of gray 
granite. In the middle of the circular Plaza is the 
fresh granite Ionic triumphal arch of Charles III. Now, 
there is agate something like, and in excellent taste. It 
is another rendering of the Paris Arc de I'Etoile but in 
much better proportion to its surroundings, which it 
does not dwarf, like the too large French monument. 



TO MADRID, AND WHEN YOU GET THERE 153 

The boulevard trees are sycamore and acacia, very 
young yet, but the more umbrageous greenery of the 
public park, the Buen Retiro, is seen at one side. The 
street of Alcala, if one follow it all the way from its 
origin, comes up to this arch from the Puerta del Sol, 
greatly aggrandizing in width on the way. It passes 
the War Department, terraced up amid grassy grounds 
in a situation not unlike that of the White House at 
Washington; the fine new granite Bank of Spain, still 
under construction; and the grand marble fountain, in 
which a majestic queen is driving a chariot drawn by 
lions. The granite so much in use in the newer struc- 
tures is like that employed in many of our public struc- 
tures, and in the huge Equitable Building in New York. 
And apropos of this, just as the New York Life Insur- 
ance had the largest sign in the Puerta del Sol, the Equit- 
able had put up one of the finest buildings in the city, 
naturally a source of pride to the patriotic American. 

All this did not prevent Madrid from looking like 
such French provincial cities as Lyons and Marseilles, 
notably vacant of charm. Nor did it prevent washing 
being hung out even on houses of this fashionable 
quarter. The concierge system prevails in the large 
Madrid houses as at Paris, and the unhappy /^r/^r^ or 
portera often seems to occupy an even darker nook than 
his contemporary there. I priced an apartment billed 
for rent in one of the very best houses. It consisted of 
eleven rooms, on the third story, which, as the tall 
ground-floor story and an entresol are not counted, 
was equivalent to a fifth or sixth, and there was an 
ascensor — an elevator. The price was 12,000 reales. 
How magnificent to live in an apartment at 1 2, 000 reales ! 
though it was but six hundred dollars, after all. 



CHAPTER XIV 

A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID 

There was a literary club — the Liceo Literario, at 
Granada, but it did not contain many writers of note; 
indeed, I doubt if it contained any at all. I went to 
its rooms one hot evening — in the little plaza called the 
Campillo, and the building of the principal theatre — and 
saw the members playing checkers and dominoes, but 
the night-life of charming Granada seemed much pleas- 
anter outside. They were preparing just then the great 
fete of crowning the poet Zorilla, at the Alhambra, yet 
I could not even secure one of the programmes. The 
fete took place successfully later, and it was a very 
pretty and original idea. The gold for the crown, as I 
have already said, came from the sands of the Darro — 
the swift little stream that cuts off the hill of the Al- 
hambra from the gypsies' hill, the Albaycin. Now, as 
the Darro yields gold in but the smallest quantities, the 
collection of it was a labor of love and patience. 

No, among all the other classes that I saw, I did 
not see anything of the literary class, till I reached 
Madrid. But at Madrid I had the great good fortune 
to meet many of the literary men, especially of that 
fresh contemporary movement in Spanish fiction, which 
is so much translated in America of late and has won 
so much applause from the world at large. It came 
about, too, almost all in a single day, as it happened, 

154 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID 155 

and I have to count that full, pleasurable, and improv- 
ing day in literary Madrid as one of the most memorable 
of my journey and of many journeys. 

I had not really expected a great deal from such few 
letters as I brought. Not that they were not from 
sources of which I might well feel proud, but there is a 
great deal of accident about such things, and the time 
of my stay was limited. For example, I missed, on my 
first visit, a certain eminent senator, who was among 
them, and he missed me on his amiable return visit at 
my hotel. That is the way, as you know, it so often 
goes. 

But at length I found him, and he took me to his 
apartment in the Calle del Barquillo, an apartment full 
of all the charming objects that refined people gather 
round them. 

He had been cabinet-minister and was now senator. 
His district was Granada, where he had a summer home, 
out by the Cartuja, where travellers go to admire the 
rich marble-work mosaics. But fancy representing 
Granada in a legislative body ! Our American ideas are 
so full of romance about the place, that it seems like 
representing dream-land or taking out a political man- 
date from fairy-land. My senator was of a thought- 
ful, quiet mien, and courteous, unaffected manners. 
His dark olive skin, contrasting with silver hair and 
mustache, made a thoroughly handsome head, and dis- 
tinguished personality, one of the finest types of the 
Spanish gentleman; the hidalgo realized. He spoke 
excellent English; his wife spoke it without even an 
accent. The senora was the daughter of a remarkable 
historian and critic, friend — in their day — of Prescott 
and Ticknor, reviewer of history for that standard peri- 



156 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

odical the Ateneo, and at eighty with faculties as clear 
as ever, writing a history of the relations between Spain 
and England at the time of Philip II. She had lived 
much in England, and knew Lowell, James, and other 
American literary men, whom she appreciated highly. 
Indeed, it was pleasant to hear her express her admira- 
tion of the Americans, who poor souls! do not always 
get the best of characters abroad nowadays. 

"I have known so many nice ones," she said posi- 
tively, " and I am so very fond of them." 

Of our books that had pleased her she praised es- 
pecially " The Lady of the Aroostook." 

Complaint is sometimes made of the lack of intellec- 
tual people in the society of Madrid — would that such 
a complaint were well founded in Madrid alone! It is 
said to be hard to find a woman who interests herself in 
a book, and the women, after middle life, settle down 
into a pretty complete dulness. It has been gallantly 
claimed, it is true, that if Spanish women do not read 
nor write many books, it is that they understand so well 
their ability to inspire them. However this maybe, my 
accomplished hostess certainly was not one of those who 
settle into apathy in middle life. 

"/do not mean to stagnate, you see," she said, with 
her bright, engaging smile. " If anybody should cross- 
examine me on my Goethe just now, he would get well 
come up with." 

She was deep in German at the time; and, even 
while I was there, a music-master came to give his les- 
son. She talked to me admiringly of her friend, 
Seiiora Emilia Pardo Bazan, resident at Barcelona, of 
whom I have before spoken, displaying her " Insola- 
cion," illustrated with beautiful little realistic vignettes, 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID 157 

which lay open upon the table, and especially recom- 
mending her latest book, " Los Pazos de Ulloa." This 
distinguished novelist is much in town, and would be 
counted one of the literary lights of Madrid. 

Well, there is much more in the talk of a bright, 
cultivated woman than that of most men, and after 
this conversation was over, I felt my knowledge of per- 
sons and places increased, my limited horizon as to 
Madrid much widened. 

From my senator's, I went to see the novelist Perez 
Galdos. He was in the Plaza de Colon, at no great dis- 
tance away. The house was new and handsome, brick 
and stone, one of the houses in a crescent or semicircle, 
five tall stories high, and, it may be added, without 
elevators. Galdos was up in the top — Daudet lived as 
high in Paris, and, though an invalid, had no elevator 
either. The view was charming, the site the very best 
part of Madrid, the brand new part, in which, with wide 
boulevards — at present a little vacant — and plentiful 
gardens and statues, the Spanish capital is trying to 
emulate Paris. It is at the junction of the Paseo de 
Recoletos with that of La Castellana, and these are the 
continuation of the Prado, where Madrid promenades 
on fete-days and fine summer evenings. A part of the 
Prado, called the Salon, is almost as carefully kept as 
a dancing-floor, and on one side of it, separated by a 
balustrade, with gas-lamps, is a macadamized road 
along which pass the carriages and equestrians, as in 
Rotten Row. 

A little south — to mention what the novelist had clos- 
est at hand — was the ornate, dainty theatre of Prince 
Alfonso; directly in front, the handsome Colon (Colum- 
bus) monument; and beyond that, veiled by the boule- 



158 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

vard trees, the Mint and the National Museum and 
Library. 

His apartment showed comfortable command of 
money. Indeed, the vogue enjoyed by the author of 
"Dona Perfecta " and "Gloria" must have resulted in 
good financial returns. There were many bright, sketchy 
water-colors and drawings, as if the author were an 
amateur in such things and might have picked them 
up from artist friends, and then there were rather too 
many small knick-knacks about, as if a feminine taste 
had prevailed, somewhat at the expense of solidity of 
effect. The servant who opened the door was reddish- 
dark, like a Mexican Indian, and of the same smiling, 
docile character. She evidently had orders to protect 
her master's leisure, but she was too honest to do it. 
She would see if he was at home. She did not think he 
was. Probably he had gone out and would not return 
till two o'clock, and so on and so forth. 

It was transparently clear that he was at home, and 
he was. But he kindly allowed me to disturb him. 
He came into the room with a cigarette between thumb 
and finger, a dark, slender, tallish, rather loose-jointed 
man, of forty-four, characterized by a hard-working air 
and a younger look. 

We began to talk of the realistic movement in litera- 
ture. In Spain realism is conceived as an enlightened 
sort of social history. It aims to choose what is vital 
with meaning and best worthy of attention. It gives no 
countenance to the assumption, based upon certain per- 
formances of the French school, that it should be only a 
display of the ugly and disgusting. We were in accord 
on the subject, and had it delightfully all our own 
way. 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID 159 

Galdos next showed me a long shelf of his books, in 
English, their English and American bindings much 
more substantial than the Spanish. Indeed, on the 
Continent generally, they do not publish in bindings 
at all, but only in paper. He gave me his latest, 
"Miau." — Miau! miaul — it sounds like a cat. That is 
precisely what it is. It is the history of a family whose 
peculiar facial expression gives them, particularly the 
three women in it, a resemblance to the porcelain cats 
made for ornament. A schoolboy " Miau " fights his 
way dismally through school under the weight of his 
nickname. It is the history, too, of a poor old man 
who drags out his life hoping to be reinstated in a gov- 
ernment clerkship he has lost. He had in a supreme 
degree that habit, which most of us practise now and 
then, of trying to hoodwink destiny by pretending to 
expect nothing from it. 

"I shall never get the place," he says; "I know it 
perfectly well. I don't cherish the thousandth part of 
an illusion on that score, and never have." 

But, all the same, he passes his time devouring 
the Correspondencia — that famous Co7'respondencia de- 
voted so exclusively to news — and in going down to the 
cafes to see if he cannot hear of some change of gov- 
ernment, some new combinacion^ under which he may 
be reinstated. We have an extended picture of bureau- 
cratic life under the Spanish government, a good deal 
like the bright account Sidney Luska has given — in 
" Grandison Mather" — of the New York Surrogate's 
office. The story possesses considerable drollery in the 
relations of little Miau, a weakly chap subject to cata- 
leptic fits and visions, with the Creator and Ruler of the 
Universe. His conception of the Deity, in these visions. 



l6o A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

is a peculiar and rather familiar one. He is not at all 
bright in his lessons, and he imagines the august Maker 
of All Things asking him one day : 

" What did you mean by saying, in your geography 
lesson, that France is bounded on the north by the River 
Danube, and the Po passes through Pau ? Do you think 
I took so much pains to create the world to have 
you go and unsettle it all in this way? Just put your- 
self in my place a little : how would you like it yourself ?" 
The earliest of Galdos' novels proper, " Dona Perfecta," 
for he had before that written some of the romantic 
popular historical series, the Episodios Naciondles, is 
still perhaps the best. On seeing it in his book-case, I 
could not but recall my copy in Harpers' Franklin 
Square Library. That particular copy was handed on 
to me from one of the brightest minds in New York, 
who used to go around asking people if they had read 
"Dona Perfecta," and, if they had not, he didn't want 
anything more to do with them. 

On the cover of " Miau " was a singular idea, which 
might go down in America or might not. At a first 
glance it looked like an ordinary list of new publica- 
tions, but, instead it was a "List of those dealers having 
open accounts with this house, from whom we have not 
been able, up to this time, to collect what they owe." 
There followed the names of forty-two dealers in differ- 
ent places, including one recorded as having paid half 
the debt. A convenient foot-note said: " On the covers 
of succeeding volumes, we shall give the names of those 
in the above list who have in the mean time liquidated 
their accounts, and we shall also continue publishing 
the names of other delinquents, if there be occasion." 
This new way to collect old debts would, I fear, not be 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID l6l 

at all popular in our country. Delinquents would be 
rather apt to harden their hearts. 

Galdos, besides being a novelist, is a legislator. He 
sits in the Deputies, as representative of Porto Rico. 
Not that he is a resident of that island or has any special 
affiliations with it, but, here, as in other European 
countries, one may stand for any district he pleases. 
Nor is he an orator — nor yet active in the political way. 
I heard say that he got elected merely in order to study 
legislative manners at first hand. In another book, 
therefore, we might expect an intimate picture of the 
Cortes of Spain, as of the government offices in the 
last. Fancy an American author being able to get 
elected to Congress to secure material for a novel — or, 
indeed, to get elected there on any score whatever. 
Truly the Spanish are more enterprising than we. 

It was one of the peculiarities of Galdos at that time 
that he did not want to tell anything about his past; 
interviewers and friendly inquirers blunted their efforts 
upon him in vain. Whether this were only modesty or 
dipose, which one so popular could safely assume, it had 
at least the refreshing merit of originality. All that 
was known of him, by any admissions of his own, was 
that he was born in the Canary Islands. There was an 
amusing little volume, of thirty-nine closely printed 
pages devoted to him, in a series of contemporary bio- 
graphical sketches, which probably contained less on 
its subject than any other book ever printed. 

The biographer was a friend of Galdos, and as this 
was the very first volume in the series too, he had fan- 
cied that Galdos would give him as full information as 
possible, on the score of personal friendship and to give 
the enterprise a favorable start. 



l62 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

" But what incredible labors it cost me," exclaims the 
writer in despair, " to draw from him the mere admis- 
sion that he was born at Las Palmas — which I already 
knew. He has a history, but he keeps it under lock 
and key. After a long and amiable correspondence it 
appeared that he could not even figure to himself what 
kind of biographical data I wanted. The upshot and 
resultant of the whole was that he conceded having been 
born at Las Palmas — and there was nothing more." 

I had also a letter to Armando Palacio Valdes, but 
as he lives at Oviedo, a small city far in the north of 
Spain, I did not expect to see him till, if at all, I should 
reach that distant point in my travels. 

But I learned from Perez Galdos that he must be in 
Madrid at this time; he had seen him only the day be- 
fore, and told me where he was stopping — Plaza de la 
Independencia, No. 9, third piso, or story, right. The 
house was another fine, proper, conventional one. In 
the apartment entrance door, a common Spanish fea- 
ture and a good idea, was a revolving brass disk 
through which the servant could see who rang before 
opening the door. 

Senor Valdes was not in, but momentarily expected ; 
I waited, and talked with a younger brother, who looks 
much like him, and presently he came. He had a 
bright, winning smile, thoroughly dark, Spanish com- 
plexion, and short beard curling round a rather plump 
face. He was on the whole somewhat German-looking, 
had a more amiable expression than Galdos, and was 
much younger. Except that humorists are notoriously 
sombre — one would have said that he came well by the 
abundance of humor in his most excellent novels. This 
was but a boarding-house and transient abode, and one 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID 1 63 

could not judge of his personal tastes from the sur- 
roundings. He told me he aimed to pass about three 
months of the year in the capital. He had two younger 
brothers in business positions in Madrid, and I saw a 
little son, Armando Palacio Valdes, Jr., dressed in a 
miniature bull-fighter's costume, as Spanish urchins so 
often are. Valdes had met with a crushing bereave- 
ment after a short married life. His young wife died, 
leaving him this child, but eight months from their wed- 
ding-day. 

Late articles on Spanish literature in Harper's Maga- 
zine^ and the translations of his books in America, made 
an easy point of departure. He was especially pleased 
with the appreciative opinions concerning his part in 
the present movement. He read English with difficulty, 
and did not speak it. When it was a question of send- 
ing him some piece of writing of mine, he said, with a 
smile, " Let it be in French at least." Howells' article 
tracing the humor of Cervantes to the English school, 
through Fielding and Thackeray, had much interested 
him. He belongs very much among the best humor- 
ists himself, though we are possessed to think of the 
Spaniards only as a dark, serious, and tragic people. 
Oh, these preconceived impressions of ours! Oh^ la-la! 
He, too, gave me his latest book, with an inscription 
'"''en prueba de amistad'' — in proof of friendship. I 
was gathering a charming collection. I have already 
spoken of this extremely gay and amusing La Hermdna 
San Sulpicio. 

It is a "novel of manners," an account of a modern 
love-affair, and depends for its interest upon character. 
There is quaint originality even in the choice of the 
minor, humorous incidents. In this respect, and in the 



164 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

sparkle of the conversations, it calls to mind Thomas 
Hardy, though the style is without a certain ponder- 
ousness the latter indulges in, perhaps through hav- 
ing read, or written, too many articles in the philosophic 
reviews. The hero, so to call him, for nobody in the 
book is at all " too good for human nature's daily food," 
is a young Galician medical student, who passes his 
time in trying his hand at verses and dramas. He has 
serious thoughts of putting upon his visiting-card " Cef- 
erino Sanjurjo, Descriptive Poet." We first meet him 
going down by rail from Madrid to the Baths of Mar- 
molejo. He has a travelling companion, a man who 
has just been elected judge, and must present himself 
without fail at Seville on the arrival of the train, to be 
sworn in. At the station of Baeza the judge gets off, 
only in smoking-cap and slippers, and the train appar- 
ently goes on without him. Senor Sanjurjo, thinking 
he is left, means to do a friendly act by putting off his 
effects at the next station and instructing a station-hand 
to telegraph back. Fancy his sensations when, at the 
station of Andujar, the judge, a most pompous and 
irascible person, walks into the car again, having only 
spent the interval with acquaintances farther back in 
the train. 

The main situation of the story is quite unusual. Sis- 
ter San Sulpice is a little nun, a charmingly pretty and 
mischievous one ; there never was a more roguish and 
tantalizing daughter of Eve. The staid nun's habit is 
very becoming to her. But she belongs to an order 
which has her vows of allegiance for but three years, she 
has entered it only to escape certain disagreeable things 
in her family, with no real intention of remaining if she 
can help it. Her three years was to be up in a few 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID 1 65 

weeks. The main part of the sprightly, laughing love- 
affair, with its many ingenious turns, goes on in the 
outer world. Incidentally every typical phase of Se- 
ville, every class of society, is displayed. I wish I had 
read the book before going there. I do not know that 
I should call it deep — something profounder even in 
character-drawing might easily be conceived — but it is 
graphic, and gives a comprehension of a state of 
society to which no mere traveller could ever attain. 
The hero is a very every-day person, as I have said. 
He tells the story himself, by the way, and he spares 
neither his own simplicity nor shortcomings. I should 
like him better if he were not quite so every-day, but 
it is a great point in his favor that he owns up so 
frankly. What do you think he does, at the end ? 
It is one of those novel touches to which I have 
already referred. I doubt if many such things can be 
found elsewhere. In order to get the consent of his 
wife's mother and her administrator, to his marriage 
— which they both strenuously opposed — he had ap- 
pealed to them on the mercenary side. He had 
finally consented not to ask for an accounting, and 
to leave the management of his wife's fortune in their 
hands, together with one-third of the income from a 
profitable factory of hers. But he tells us — it is after 
the wedding: 

'' Be it known, then, that I mailed from Madrid a duly 
legalized power of attorney to claim my wife's full in- 
heritance. I had given my word, it is true, but I had 
not bound myself by any document. I was thinking 
every instant of that blessed dower, imprisoned in dis- 
tant hands, and what might become of it. I hope that 
the reader, unless he be one of those rigid Catos who 



l66 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

know nothing whatever but the strait and narrow way, 
will, though he justly censure me, not dismiss me 
wholly from his good graces." 

This story is accompanied by an extended preface 
containing Valdes' profession of the realistic faith as 
applied to novel-writing. The preface is perhaps too 
long where it is; the reader is hardly willing to put up 
with so much delay before arriving at the story; but it 
can be read afterward, and, at any rate, it is full of ex- 
cellent ideas and a spirit of frank, open confession. 

"While novelist and dramatist," he says, "refuse to 
recognize that everything is plot^ that all of life is equally 
interesting, while they devote themselves, instead, to 
weaving would-be stupendous, but really puerile, com- 
plications and labyrinths, they can give us no solid, en- 
during work." 

Again he admits, almost naively, " There are chap- 
ters in my novels which I am very much ashamed of 
and would abolish, with the greatest pleasure. It is 
almost needless to say," he adds, "that these are the 
very ones that have won the most applause." And he 
goes on : " Henceforward I am resolved to eliminate from 
my work every false, improbable element. My aspira- 
tion is to produce effects that shall be not violent but 
convincing and useful." 

It was still early in the day. My introduction to Juan 
Valera, a third in the group of great Spanish novelists, 
remained. Should I be able to find him also ? It seemed 
really too much to expect in a single day, with experience 
of Paris still fresh upon me, where almost the chief 
part of every enterprise was the tedious preliminaries 
and delays. 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID 167 

But this good fortune too was mine. I found Don 
Juan Valera at his bachelor-like apartment, in the Calle 
de Claudio Coello. This again is in the district where 
much grand new building was going on, but his house 
was of the older sort, a business-like building, with some 
patches of the brown stucco on its front peeling off. 

Don Juan Valera holds the best possible social posi- 
tion. He has been the Spanish minister at Washing- 
ton, he is a crown senator, and his sister is the Duchess 
of Malakoff, one of the distinguished ornaments of 
Paris high life. He has been spoken of by the flippant 
"Paul Vasili," who writes of the society of the great 
capitals of Europe, in the NoiLvelle Reime^ as '' an aris- 
tocrat by station but a radical by choice," and also as 
a cynic, and " the coldest of men." He certainly was 
not the latter to me. He honored my introduction 
with a hospitable, even friendly, politeness, made all 
the more charming by the easy manner of an accom- 
plished man of the world. Now as to his looks, for, 
superficial as it may seem, I am sure we all like to know 
the appearance of great men we honor and esteem. 
He had gray mustache and hair, cut close, and a firm, 
brown, aristocratic sort of complexion. He was digni- 
fied, polished, comfortably well-built, a handsome man 
for his age, which might be sixty, and very well dressed. 

After second breakfast, about noon, when I arrived, 
he had excellent coffee, served in the study, and cigars 
of corresponding merit. There were some old portraits, 
and the walls were lined with books, most in bindings 
of an expensive old-fashioned sort, indicating a certain 
antiquity. All the chairs, too, were strewn with books; 
the chamber was the work-room of a busy literary man. 

Valera has not poured forth volumes with the fecun- 



l68 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

dity of that French romancer, for instance, of whom it 
was said that he was so busy writing about life that he 
had never had any time to see it, yet what with a mul- 
titude of poems, novels, tales, dissertations, and critical 
papers, he has been a very prolific writer. He was 
regularly trained for the diplomatic career, knows many 
languages, and learning plays an important part in his 
works. A new life of Vasco de Gama, in Portuguese, 
was lying about on a chair, on another a well-thumbed 
copy of Dr. Draper's " History of Civilization," in Eng- 
lish, and in the book case was Stedman's study of the 
American poets. He speaks English, but prefers French. 
In America he had known Whittier, Lowell, and 
Story; he has translated into Spanish some of Whit- 
tier's verse. Nevertheless there must have been some- 
thing rather alien to him in the American movement in 
letters, for in his own " Cartas Americdnas " he comes to 
the conclusion, hard indeed for us to reconcile ourselves 
to, that the literature of the South American republics 
is superior to ours. The conclusion from my own lim- 
ited experience with Spanish-American literature has 
been that while, especially in poetry, it has a great deal 
of deftness and happy faculty of expression, it is too 
often lacking in solidity and ideas, it inclines to the 
vice of sacrificing sense to sound. These " Cartas 
Afnericdjtas " — American Letters — were first published in 
a series of separate articles, each of them treating of 
the authors of some South American state in its turn. 
The opinion of so able a judge should at least dispose 
us to acquaint ourselves better with the work of rivals, 
known already in Europe it would seem, but almost 
wholly unknown to us. Certainly the "Maria" of a 
Colombian writer, Jorge Isaacs, lately translated, one of 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID 1 69 

the most charming idyls I know, is a favorable ex- 
ample worthy of an author of any race or clime. 

Valeraisbest known among us by his *' Pepita Xime- 
nez." Nor could there be a better basis for his reputa- 
tion than this strong, moving, natural, carefully wrought 
novel, of Andalusian life, and of love in a high-minded, 
reflective nature. It has been done into almost all the 
languages. 

I was booked for half-past four that same afternoon 
for the great bull-fight, a function at which both the 
most famous espddas^ Lagartijo and Mazzantini, were 
to appear. I had already described bull-fighting in 
Mexico, and it seemed the next thing to an imperative 
duty to see the best article in the same line elsewhere. 
When I referred to my engagement, Senor Valera spoke 
of this cruel amusement with the same repugnance an 
American or an Englishman might express. He com- 
mended, on the other hand, the mild Portuguese form, 
in which the bull is baited but not killed. In that, too, 
the horses are not sacrificed in the fray but are fine and 
mettlesome, and thus the pleasure of gallant, spirited 
horsemanship is added to the other scenic effects. 

We now sallied forth, and my host was good enough 
to take me, as a privileged guest, to visit the Senate and 
the Chamber of Deputies. I had the time, as both be- 
gin their sittings at three o'clock. What a solid bit of 
comfort it was! No need of formalities, under such 
an efficient protection, no tiresome, roundabout, red- 
tape preliminaries. As by a charm, we passed all guards 
and watchers and entered all points of vantage and to 
inmost recesses of both houses. 

Two heralds-at-arms, in gorgeous crimson velvet, 
with the arms of Spain blazoned in gold on their breasts, 



lyo A house-hUnter in Europe 

precede the president of each body to his chair, carrying 
maces after the stately mediaeval fashion, and afterward 
stand at the bar during the whole session. In exterior 
aspect the palaces of the two legislative bodies are not 
remarkable. That of the Deputies somewhat resembles 
the Corps Legislatif at Paris, while the assembly-hall 
of the Senate is the ancient church of an Augustinian 
convent. But the arrangements within are very luxuri- 
ous and comfortable, recalling those of fine clubs. In 
the main salon, committee-rooms, and halls, were mag- 
nificent enormous pictures, of that cheerful, bright kind, 
nearly devoid of shadow, in which the strong modern 
Spanish school almost realizes the veritable daylight. 
Some of the finest of the pictures, too, had gone to the 
Paris Exhibition as part of Spain's display. The legis- 
lative benches were upholstered in warm red ; the floors 
were spread with carpets of large design, woven at the 
government's own manufactory; I recollect that the 
drawing-room of the president of the Senate was en- 
tirely in splendid yellow. It was hung with the portraits 
of the successive occupants of the ofiice. I gazed first 
at the present incumbent, the Marques de la Habana, 
in his portrait, painted in the fine uniform of Captain- 
General of Cuba. When I presently came to see him 
in the body there was a wonderful falling-off. He was 
a spare little man, all in black, which was not becom- 
ing to his sallow complexion, and he was almost lost in 
the depths of his vast official chair. The Queen's 
throne was just behind him, unoccupied. 

The Deputies were all young men, or but little over 
the prime of life, fine-looking men, carefully dressed, 
for the most part in black. In the Senate Chamber 
you saw many more fine heads, elderly, of course, 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID I7I 

touched with gray, dignified or venerable. And among 
the finest, the most gracious of them all, I could not 
but place Juan Valera. An ornament to letters as he 
was, I left him behind, among his brother senators, 
an equal ornament to legislation and the cause of good 
government. 

Senor Valdes had said to me, smiling amiably, as 
though he saw the joke as well as myself, that we 
should most likely meet at the bull-fight. But I did 
not find him there, and witnessed it alone. 

The Plaza de Toros was a vast, new amphitheatre, 
of brick and stone, in a half-Moorish style, everything 
very harsh and cold about it. My seat (price six francs) 
was a numbered place on a bare granite step, amid 
thousands of similar ones. Those who are initiated 
bring their own cushions. It came on to rain, and um- 
brellas were put up in every direction. Facetious spirits 
now imitated the water-sellers in the streets, who 
cry, ^^Aguaf quien quiere agua?'' — Water! who wants 
water? There were only a few women present, but 
these few seemed to be all of the superior class; several 
gray-haired ladies were seen in the president's tribune. 
At the bloodiest passages, I observed the feminine ele- 
ment looking on unconcerned, or laughing about irrele- 
vant matters with male admirers. The audience called 
the two famous bull-fighters by their pet names. 

" Now, Luis! now! " to Mazzantini, and, " Well done, 
Manuel! " to Lagartijo. 

These men — shaven smug and clean — looked some- 
how like priests, in spite of their brilliant costume, 
and I do not see how the costume can be thought be- 
coming. The breeches fall awkwardly far below the 
knees, and the jacket comes only just below the shoul- 



172 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

der-blades. Lagartijo slightly resembled Irving. He 
was fifty, but took flying leaps over the high barrier as 
if he were fifteen. The only slight redeeming feature 
in the whole brutal show was this evidence that a man 
with proper training may keep his strength and agility 
to almost any age he pleases. 

Admirers threw their hats and even their cushions 
into the ring, and it was etiquette for these to be tossed 
back again by the bull-fighting troupe. The hats were 
of the modern every-day fashions; they were not pic- 
turesque, like the silver-braided Mexican sombreros. I 
saw a bull furiously endeavor to gore a very good new 
Derby hat that had been tossed down in this way, but 
it was too small a mark for him and he did not succeed 
in piercing it. It was skimmed back again to its owner, 
and I have no doubt he exhibited with pride the slight 
contusions it had received, and valued it highly for the 
fiery ordeal. 

The ring was so large that the bull soon became tired 
out simply by running around it. When he first ap- 
peared he had such force that he crushed a horse against 
the barrier like a mere nothing, and made the stout 
barrier itself crack at the touch of his horns; but 
presently he stood panting, had to be lured on to the 
attack, and before he was dispatched became very dull. 
The bull-fighting really did not look very difficult, 
given a certain amount of experience, all of which made 
it an even more disgusting and cowardly exhibition than 
in Mexico, where, the ring being smaller, the men were 
apparently in more danger. 

Well, it took place in the rain, as I have said. Now, 
on the Polo Grounds at New York, an earnest baseball 
match in rain and mud cannot be called a beautiful sight, 



A DAY IN LITERARY MADRID 173 

and yet a baseball match or even the most rough-and- 
tumble foot-ball scrimmage, in the rain^ is a fair and 
gallant spectacle in comparison with the hateful atroc- 
ities and accumulated gory horrors, of any Spanish 
bull-fight. 

By half-past six it was all over. In that eventful day 
I had seen the best and also possibly the worst, of Ma- 
drid, A concourse of omnibuses with gayly decorated 
mules, awaited the throng pouring forth from the arena. 
On handsome Alcala Street, the technical bull-fighting 
paper, El Tio JmdamayW^?, already being cried, with a 
long, glowing account of the bloody affair. 



CHAPTER XV 
ASCETIC ESCORIAL AND SCULPTURED SALAMANCA 

I MOVED northward and sketched my next house-plan, 
curiously enough, at Philip II. 's gloomy Escorial. The 
village that holds the stern granite magnificence of that 
ascetic monarch is more or less a summer resort for 
Madrid people. Even this usage does not brighten it. 

All the country round about was nothing but stony 
pastures. Its only redeeming feature was plenty of 
fragrant thyme and kindred balsamic plants, which 
partially covered the poor sterile soil as if in sym- 
pathy. I had expected of the Escorial Palace a kind 
of rich and splendid gloom, but the belongings of 
our own English Puritan ancestors must have been al- 
most gay in comparison. Philip's apartment* was actu- 
ally squalid, and the dark, damp marble room in which 
he died was little more than a tomb already. The 
court retainers who occupied the village in Philip's day 
used, no doubt, to express their opinion strongly of 
their ruler's attempt to turn life into death. I saw a 
bill out, and went in to see what country life was like 
where no cottages, but only cramped apartments, were 
offered, even for the professed vacation season. The 
"bill," after a common Spanish usage, was only a bit 
of white rag tied to a railing. There were two stories, 
and two apartments of four rooms each. The floors 
were brick, the staircase was wood, a concession to 

174 



ASCETIC ESCORIAL AND SCULPTURED SALAMANCA 1 75 

warmth which is made in the north ; but thus much having 
been done for comfort, it was not thought necessary to 
paint it. The rooms had numerous closed alcoves for 
beds, so that a much larger family could have been 
stowed away in them than you might have thought. In 
the yard were two flowerless flower-beds, and against 
the end wall was an unsculptured fountain; for sculp- 
ture was never the fashion in this more than Puritanical 
place. The visit was, naturally, one more of curiosity 
than practical design. 

" How much ? " I asked. 

" Two hundred pesetas [francs] for the three months 
of the temper ada [the summer season], and five duros 
[dollars] a month, if taken for all the year." 

Surely not dean One who happened to be living at 
Madrid might do worse, as a student, than move some 
furniture out there, and pass the temporada in reading 
Prescott and thoroughly mastering Philip's vast Escorial. 

"Many thanks and good-day, senora." 

" Vaya con Bios ! " — God be with you — she murmured 
piously. 

A Spanish railway train has a way of stopping at every 
little station, not as if it had anything to do there, but 
as if it were surprised at having got over so much 
ground already and wanted to take breath awhile before 
going further. Salamanca was but about a hundred 
and seventy miles from Madrid, yet it took an eternity 
to get there. I was attracted to it naturally by the 
fame of its ancient university, and that storied univer- 
sity itself had been placed there, according to its chron- 
icles, because Salamanca was a place " abounding in 
excellent water and all other good gifts of nature 



176 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

to support life." These good gifts of nature must have 
become less abundant in the mean time. 

There is but one train, each way, daily. I arrived 
there at the uncomfortable hour of four in the morning 
and had my first glimpse of it, therefore, before the 
earliest market-man or day-laborer was abroad, and 
hours before the sleepy waiters had begun to brush out 
the crumbs of last night's revelry from the doorways 
of the cafes. It was cold, and, at the hotel, I first got 
warm by putting my legs under a table covered with a 
heavy cloth, keeping in the heat of a brazier of burning 
charcoal below. It continued chilly and overcast dur- 
ing most of my stay. Who would believe it of Sala- 
manca? Who would believe it, indeed, of Spain, where 
there should be nothing but sunshine, orange-blossoms, 
guitar-playing, perpetual gayety ? 

From the railway station you see nothing of the town ; 
you are isolated in the midst of a high, brown, dreary 
moor. But when you arrive at the central square, the 
very handsome and charming Plaza Mayor, the com- 
pensations begin. There are arcades all around it for 
promenading; the belfry of the Ayuntamiento, or city 
hall, crowns one side, and a very pretty garden, like a 
Mexican Zocalo, fills the middle space. It has some- 
thing cosey and comfortable about it ; it is not too large ; 
people pass and repass, and you have repeated glimpses 
of any interesting face or person, instead of regretfully 
seeing it vanish into the void, as is so often the case. 

Though Salamanca has but twenty thousand inhabi- 
tants, no populous city in all the United States can show 
such a public square as this. The result is not a com- 
parative triumph of money but of taste. If some of our 
municipal authorities would only go and look a little at 



ASCETIC ESCORIAL AND SCULPTURED SALAMANCA 1 77 

such things! As to the mere money, there is no doubt 
that we could perfectly afford it. 

Outside the walls, which still endure, in a crumbly 
state, I descended to the River Tormes, spanned by 
its dam, with mills at each end, and its old Roman 
bridge. From there the town looms up grandly. I 
liked it best of all, perhaps, from one of the ruined col- 
leges — the School of the Vega — down on the flat among 
the market-gardens. You are near enough at that 
point, while still retaining the general effect, to sepa- 
rate it into its details. You can admire the robust mas- 
siveness of one of the typical churches, make out the 
roofs of the College of the Military Knights of Cala- 
trava to the right, and a bit of the fagade of the Colegio 
Viejo to the left. This one, the oldest of them, dating 
from 1410, but rebuilt, in the classic style, in 1769, is 
no longer even a college. In the notable shrinking 
from former greatness the university has sustained, it 
became a part of the accommodations of the Provincial 
Government. Behind the Colegio Viejo is Santo Do- 
mingo, the rich convent where Columbus stayed when 
he came to consult the learned doctors of Salamanca 
about his project of discovering the New World. 

All the conglomerate periods in the vast, imposing 
Cathedral may be studied out, from the Tower of the 
Cockj in the Byzantine style, of the twelfth century, to 
Chirruguera's latest Renaissance. Well I remembered 
fantastic Chirruguera in Mexico, whose architecture 
he has aided so much to its very characteristic look. 
Little enough I then thought I should ever follow him 
to gis native city in Spain. When the Renaissance ar- 
rived at his period it was tired and indulged in the va- 
garies of a spoiled child, 
12 



178 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

I had seen the universities of Granada, Seville, and 
Madrid, and come away disappointed. It is true that 
nothing in Granada could ever be wholly commonplace, 
and there were gardens about and the smell of orange- 
blossoms in the air; but the buildings were quite fresh 
and new, the courts without sculpture of any kind. At 
Seville they were a little more time-worn than at Gra- 
nada, and oranges grew in the courts; but still they 
were modern, while at Madrid the long, whitewashed 
corridors were bare and plain as those of any factory, 
and the stone stairs thick with dust, like the windy 
streets without. 

I had been told I should find Salamanca a thorough- 
ly satisfactory university town, and one of the archi- 
tectural marvels of Spain. So, in fact, it proved, as to 
the latter specification, but there was no scholarly uni- 
versity atmosphere about it, and, as a residence place, 
I could scarcely even think of it. There was none of 
the mellowness of Oxford, for instance, though it is an 
almost inexhaustible museum of picturesque vestiges 
of former greatness. It had had so many monuments 
that it became known as "little Rome," just as its uni- 
versity caused it to be acclaimed the " mother of the 
sciences, arts, and virtues." Possibly Toledo has as 
many palaces, but they are packed together on its 
mediaeval hillside with only narrow alleys between, 
while those of Salamanca have space before them, and 
are seen to more advantage. The carved escutcheons 
of prelates or noble families are the principal device for 
ornament, not only here but throughout Spain, a testi- 
mony perhaps to the traditional hidalgo pride. You 
continually see long walls, otherwise plain, made very 
rich and beautiful in this way. It is a pity we can- 



ASCETIC ESCORIAL AND SCULPTURED SALAMANCA 1 79 

not have something suitable to our own conditions, 
with the general effect of these forms, always so very 
decorative. I liked especially the way the shields, with 
heraldic animals supporting them, were made to break 
the abruptness of the sharp corners of buildings. Gil 
Gonzalez de Avila insists that the blue blood repre- 
sented in Salamanca is the very bluest in all Spain. 

The chief of all its palaces was that of the Count of 
Monterey, once viceroy of Mexico, after whom pros- 
perous Monterey in that country and our own Monterey 
in California were named. The two lower stories are 
perfectly plain, the sculpture is concentrated upon an 
upper gallery, the towers, and chimneys, which gives 
great preciousness. Another count of the same family, 
having a daughter carried away by the religious en- 
thusiasm which Saint Theresa aroused among all the 
great dames of Spain, built for her the large Convent 
of the Augustinas, across the way, that she might not 
have to go far from home for her cloister. 

The palace known as the House of the Shells has its 
whole exterior carved with the scallop-shell of the pil- 
grims, and it reappears in the heavy nail-heads studding 
the door, and wrought into the beautiful iron-work 
protecting the small windows. Such shells are cut 
about the doorway of one of our own most successful 
specimens of domestic architecture, on Fifth Avenue 
near Thirty-fifth Street; I wish our architects might 
drink yet further inspiration from Salamanca. 

The scallop-shell plays a very important part in the 
style. I noticed it again on an ordinary house, in the 
street leading from the Casa de Monterey. The sole or- 
nament was a large helmet, in high relief, with sword 
and scroll, and over this an enormous scallop, turned 



l8o A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

downward, as for a canopy. I went to see the house 
of Cervantes and that of Saint Theresa. The former 
has fallen into the hands of a wholly squalid tenantry; 
the latter, large and plain, still keeps up its respecta- 
bility and is now an infant-school. The saint slept on 
straw the night of her first arrival here, and she had 
more trouble about her establishment at Salamanca than 
any of the others. I used to rest a bit sometimes on a 
bench at the door of our plain hotel — albeit the best in 
the place — the Hotel del Comercio. The maid-ser- 
vants were always going to a fountain, in the small Plaza 
de los Bandos, before it, to bring back water, in red 
earthen jars upon their heads. Occasionally they bal- 
anced one also upon their hips. These figures settle the 
problem of water-supply for a large part of Spain, and 
make most excellent foreground material. 

There was enough in the view at this one point to fill 
a whole sketch-book, and yet this modest little plaza 
was not one of those that pretended to the recognition 
of tourists. On the right was the Palace of Garci- 
grande, its odd windows, with balconies, notched into 
the corner of the building. Philip II. was married at 
Salamanca, and it was over among those houses that 
the Duke of Alva gave him a grand reception. 

On the other side was a portion of the Convent of 
Carmen, now the diligence-office for Zamora and the 
Baths of Ledesma; next to that the domed Church of 
Santo Tome, with bells in open arches. Down at the end 
of the plaza a palace, now the offices of a railway com- 
pany, shows beautiful arches of an upper gallery bricked 
in and fine columns and escutcheons half obliterated with 
plaster. This rude filling in of the fine upper galleries 
is a common sight all over town ; a poorer race of ten- 



ASCETIC ESCORIAL AND SCULPTURED SALAMANCA l8l 

ants did not wish to devote good space to the mere 
luxury of sunning themselves. 

The only house I really looked at from the house- 
hunter's point of view was that known as Dona Maria 
la Brava's, in that same plaza. It was offered for rent, 
and, though covered with shields and evidently once 
the dwelling of a person of very high rank, it was not 
large to a cursory view, and seemed as if it might be 
well enough adapted to a family of moderate size. It 
showed in front only a single window, above the great 
round arch of the entrance door, and it could be seen 
that even this window had once been smaller and 
arched instead of square. 

''Yes," I reflected, "it was like the imprudence of 
some of those poor and proud old hidalgos to spend all 
they had in cutting armorial bearings on the facade, 
and then to retire into semi-Moorish obscurity and the 
narrowest of quarters for themselves." 

But this theory did not hold on entering the building. 
It was of prodigious extent, its size dissimulated by a 
rambling plan, spreading far on other streets, and the 
agent wanted to let it if possible for more railroad 
offices. 

" Who Tc^^j" Dona Maria la Brava?" I ventured to ask, 
much interested in her. 

"Oh, she lived a long time ago; there's nothing ob- 
jectionable on her account," he answered, as if I had 
asked in a spirit of carping criticism. 

In a town where you had all at once Hannibal, the 
Cid, Bernardo del Carpio, Columbus, Cortez, Cervantes, 
the Duke of Alva, Saint Theresa, and Saint Thomas of 
Villanueva, the annals were almost too rich and over- 
powering, and I was longing, by way of refreshment, 



162 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

for the history of some one much nearer the level of 
ordinary life, some one of merely every-day character 
and fortune. But the writers I fell in with told me 
nothing of Dona Maria la Brava, except a casual men- 
tion of her as the cause of an episode of the fourteenth 
century called the War of the Bands. When I searched 
in the library, one tantalizing old chronicler said he 
really could not describe doings of those times for fear 
of increasing the wickedness of the human race if it 
knew of them. But I finally found one who was less 
scrupulous, and told. And this is what she did, the 
lady whose house I liked. 

She was of the ancient family of the Monroys, and was 
left a widow, with two sons in their teens. Her title of 
la Brava came from the indomitable pluck and energy 
she manifested in avenging those young men, assassi- 
nated under very unusual circumstances. One of them 
was playing /^/^/<3!, or tennis, with two young friends of 
his, of the equally distinguished family of the Manzanos. 
They quarrelled, laid their hands to their swords, and 
the Manzanos and their servants slew Monroy. Then, 
fearing the wrath of an elder brother of his, they lay in 
wait for that brother and slew him also. It reads al- 
most like a Southern vendetta of the approved sort. 

The bodies of her two sons were brought back to 
the mother at the same time. It was thought that 
she would die, but she granted her broken heart not 
even a sigh nor a tear. Feigning to retire, for the 
period of mourning, to her country place, she gathered 
twenty armed retainers, and set off that night in pur- 
suit of the assassins, who had fled. She scoured the 
kingdom for them. They had taken refuge in Portu- 
gal. She came up with them even there, broke in 



ASCETIC ESCORIAL AND SCULPTURED SALAMANCA 183 

the door of their hostelry, slew them and brought back 
their heads. When all supposed she had been simply 
nursing her woman's grief at Villalba, she rode into 
town, bearing these two bloody trophies aloft on 
spears, and, going straight to the church, laid them 
on the tombs of her murdered sons, to appease their 
hapless manes. 

Then it was the turn of the Manzanos again. The 
partisans of each side rallied and there commenced a 
war of factions that lasted forty years. Nothing but 
the intervention of Saint John of Sahagun, Salamanca's 
angelic apostle, could put an end to the sanguinary strife ; 
and even he accomplished it by no means with ease. On 
the contrary, the feud was apparently going on nearly 
his whole life long. By dint of continual prayers, good 
works, and miracles, he was finally successful, and the 
house where, through his intervention, the reconcilia- 
tion took place bears to this day the inscription: 

Ira odium generatj 
Concordia nutrit amorem. 

Gil Gonzalez de Avila, one of the old black-letter 
authors I rummaged out in the library of the Univer- 
sity of Salamanca, would have it that this appeasement 
took place about the time that the University settled 
the disputed title to the papacy as between Rome and 
Avignon, that is to say in 1381. But Bernardo Dorado, 
another, asserted that the War of the Bands must have 
been between 1440 and 1447, and that Saint John de 
Sahagun was not even alive at that time. 

The appearance of Dona Maria la Brava's house 
would seem to agree best with the later date. 



CHAPTER XVI 
BEING A BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA 

Le Sage's Bachelor of Salamanca was from the neigh- 
boring village of Molidaro, a son of the alcalde of that 
place. He shone especially in disputation. He de- 
sired to be a tutor, and set out for Madrid by the mule- 
path — one can easily understand there were few roads 
in those times — with no other property but his student's 
dress and a few pistoles in his pocket. When, in 
seeking a place, he announced himself as a bachelor of 
Salamanca he was at once interrupted with, 

" Say no more, you make yourself a sufficient eulogy 
in that single phrase." 

Again when the much-worried Aunt and Niece are 
contriving with Sampson Carrasco to recapture the er- 
ratic Don Quixote, that confident adviser, taking the 
whole affair upon himself, says to them : " Get you home, 
for know you that I am a bachelor of Salamanca, beyond 
which bachelorizing can no further go." 

Perhaps you may not know it, but the title of bache- 
lor of Salamanca no longer exists. The degree of B. A. 
is no longer given now by the university but only by the 
Institutes of Secondary Instruction. 

Don Mames Esparabe, Rector of the University and 
a resident near the remarkably ornate Casa de la Sa- 
lina, was a pleasant man of sixty, with grayish beard. 
So far as anything characteristically " Spanish " in his 

184 



BEING A BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA 1 85 

appearance was concerned, he might just as easily have 
been a professor in an American college. He had 
taught first at Saragossa, and royal decree had named 
him Rector after two years' service here as professor. 

Public instruction in Spain being now organized by 
University Districts, he had under his jurisdiction, as- 
sisted by a council, the educational interests of the four 
provinces of Avila, Caceres, Salamanca, and Zamora, 
or of more than a million of people. His charge com- 
prised the four institutes of secondary instruction ; a 
dozen private institutes of about equal rank ; the nor- 
mal schools, male and female ; various technical schools ; 
that for the deaf-mutes and blind ; and, finally, all the 
primary schools in those provinces. 

The examinations are conducted, and premiums, cer- 
tificates, degrees, and licenses issued, in the name of 
the Minister of Public Instruction, under the direction 
of the University District of Salamanca, in accordance 
with the General Law of 1857, the improved form in 
which Spain has put herself in the path of modern prog- 
ress in matters of education. 

After we had talked considerably of such-like weighty 
matters, the Rector was kind enough to detail one of 
his brightest undergraduates, a student in law, to go 
about with me, and aid me to get correct impressions of 
the university life. 

My friend, the Law-Student, expected to finish, that 
coming June, studies, which had occupied him six years, 
and to take the degree of Licentiate. I may add, 
he has since taken it, with the note of sobresaliente, 
super-excellent, ^added to his examination. Then he 
would go to Segovia, his home, and after that — he did 
not quite know, but he must do something to help sup- 



l86 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

port several younger brothers and sisters, thrown upon 
his hands by the recent death of both parents on the 
same day. 

He was a becario^ or holder of a scholarship, in the 
College of San Salvador. There were twenty-seven of 
these ancient colleges in all, founded, much as were 
those at Oxford, by bequest of some rich and noble 
personage or some monastic order. This last source 
would account for more of them than any other. The 
monastic orders in the day of Spanish prosperity were 
very wealthy and powerful ; and all made haste to es- 
tablish houses, whither, still keeping them under their 
own control, they sent their pupils and postulants for 
admission to their own body, to enjoy the teaching of 
the most famous instructors of the age. 

Most of the ancient twenty-seven colleges have van- 
ished utterly, and the places that knew them once know 
them no more forever. Others still remain in a condi- 
tion of sad decay. At the College of the Knights of 
Calatrava, for instance, you still see the knightly ban- 
ners, full size, blazoned in sculpture on the outer wall. 
Granite columns, carven in elaborate patterns of braid 
and tassel-work, contrast with the softer sandstone of 
the general fagade. But within the grand staircase is 
cracked and askew, the court weed-grown and given 
over to tenants who do their washing under the fine 
old arcades. 

Out in the western part of the town is a whole district 
in ruins, a vast King's College, a College of La Mag- 
dalena, and others, as desolate as Tadmor of the Wil- 
derness. It was done by the Frengh, in Napoleon's 
disastrous attempt to establish Joseph Bonaparte upon 
the throne of Spain. Later, there was a professor who, 



BEING A BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA 187 

to his dying day, could never refrain from branching 
out into fierce invectives against the French, as often as 
the subject of history was touched upon. 

From the esplanade of ruined King's College, you 
look off to the bare, treeless, open country, its every 
road and path traced as on a map. Alba de Tormes, 
where Saint Theresa established one of her convents of 
barefooted Carmelites, and where she died, is there. 
And much nearer is Arapiles, where Wellington inflicted 
upon Marshal Marmont the defeat which was the be- 
ginning of the end for the French domination in Spain 
and for Napoleon's dynasty. 

Out that way, still survived a Colegio de las Nobles 
Irlandeses^ a college established by Philip II. for the 
education of the sons of Irish of noble birth, as a re- 
ward for the services of that class in his armies. It was 
once the headquarters of Wellington, and out of this 
occupation resulted important political consequences. 
Wellington, through his friendship for the rector, and 
perhaps involuntarily impressed by the great figure 
this people was making in all other countries than 
its own, lent his aid to the reform-agitation of O'Con- 
nell. 

The inmates of the Colegio de las Nobles Irlandeses 
had become reduced at present to three young ecclesi- 
astics — I do not know whether they were nobles or not — 
and the footfall echoed lonesomely in the halls and 
courts of the lovely old building. 

"Why don't you stay here ? " asked my conductor, 
who was one of the three. 

"I? — I? — but I don't quite understand," I replied, 
puzzled as well as pleased at this hearty offer of hospi- 
tality. 



l88 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

But it appears that, by tradition or the constitution of 
the college, any English-speaking stranger may of right 
be entertained there for a few days. 

The names of many of the defunct schools are per- 
petuated in the becas^ or scholarships, left behind. 
What with the accidents of ages, and university reform, 
great changes have been operated in the funds. Where 
notably insufficient, two or three are united in one 
scholarship, or they are pieced out by an allowance 
from some other disposable fund. 

The scholarships of the four colleges known from the 
earliest times as Mayores^ or principal, namely, San 
Bartolome, Santiago el Zebedeo, San Salvador, and 
Santiago Apostol, are conferred by open competition. 
It was thus my student friend had won his beca^ of ex- 
tinct San Salvador. In the Menoj-es^ or minor schools, 
they are obtained through relationship to the founder 
or nomination by his living descendant. It is curious 
to read some of the names in the catalogue of patrons. 
The Duke of Berwick and Alva, as Count of Montijo, 
nominates to the scholarships of San Pelayo. His ex- 
cellency the Duke of Berwick and Alva, as Count of 
Lermus, also nominates — in conjunction with the body 
of University Doctors — to those of Santa Maria de los 
Angeles. The body of University Doctors alone nomi- 
nates to the Trilinglie — founded especially to promote 
the study of the three tongues, Latin, Greek, and He- 
brew. 

The ^^<r«j- are usually for a long term of years. Some 
even include a lump sum for a year's travelling, at the 
end of the course. The income of the beca may be 
stopped for a time as a penalty, or even cut off entirely; 
and if the beneficiary has not travelled or has not used 



BEING A BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA 1 89 

the money for study, an action may be brought against 
him, and he may be held to pay it back. 

Once, while I was at dinner, at the hotel, my waiter 
came and asked confidentially in my ear if I did not 
call myself " Don Guillermo " Enrique — William Henry. 
Touched by this affectionate interest, I replied : 

" Yes, and why ? " 

" Then there is a caballero in the office waiting to see 
you." 

Ah, the stately word caballero ! It proved to be my 
law-student Don Eugenic. We had exchanged cards 
and it was thus he chose to interpret mine, dismissing 
the family name as unimportant. He had seen me 
working at a rough plan of the university buildings, 
and had accommodatingly come to bring me a much 
better one, made by himself. There was not even any 
good map of the city to be had, at the time, nor any ade- 
quate guide-book. It had not been used to being a 
show-place. 

As we strolled about, there was very little clamor 
in the streets, no sign of exuberant spirits; yet we are 
apt to think a certain merry boisterousness as much 
a part of the life in a college town as the rolling of cabs 
in a great city. Don Eugenic told me that Conduct 
was of grave importance in the college grading, and that 
a very high rank might easily be cut down by an esca- 
pade or wholly nullified. Perhapsthat partly accounted 
for it all. 

Young women's names also figure among the becarios. 
You see, for instance. Dona Angela So-and-so, credited 
to the ancient Colegio de las Doncellas (College of 
Damsels), and as pursuing her studies at the Female 
Normal School. 



IQO A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

This was a court at the left of the Colegio Viejo, op- 
posite the more picturesque side of the cathedral. All 
Spanish senoritas are not draped in coquettish mantillas 
and perpetually dancing to castanets. I doubt if one, 
looking at the photograph of a graduating class of this 
school, would know to just what country the girls be- 
longed. I had found that Africa was not so very Afri- 
can, and now there were a good many things in Spain 
not particularly Spanish. Salamanca has been mindful 
of female interests from the beginning. Some early 
queen conferred upon the damsels of eight of its princi- 
pal families the right to ennoble whomsoever they should 
marry. The university used to endow deserving dam- 
sels with wedding portions. There were women of ex- 
traordinary intellect and note, like Beatriz Galindo and 
Luisa de Madrano, who rose to be professors in the uni- 
versity. The former became the governess of Isabella, 
patron of Columbus. 

Plutarch eulogized the women of Salamanca. And 
that brings me to Hannibal, as it brought Don Eugenic 
and myself, when we sat on the steps of an old gran- 
ite cross, without the walls, and looked well at an ancient 
portal that is called Hannibal's Gate. It seems that in 
the Second Punic War the city surrendered to Hanni- 
bal, and its defenders marched out, leaving their arms 
behind them. But the women concealed weapons 
under their draperies, and, at a given moment, handed 
them to the men, to inflict some new damage on the 
enemy, which they tried — unsuccessfully — to do. 

I was rather thrilled to have got even so near to 
Hannibal, for whom I have an unusual admiration, as 
that crumbly gate. He stormed over from Africa with 
his half-naked Numidians and went on to Rome, leav- 



BEING A BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA 19I 

ing nothing but conquered Roman provinces behind 
him. The Pyrenees, the Alps! he swarmed over them 
with his sun-baked Numidians, elephants and all, and 
through nearly all Italy, where he stayed for sixteen 
years and would surely have made an end of the Roman 
power, but for the treachery of his own countrymen. 

Did you in very truth do that, old Hannibal ? Was 
there ever anything like it ? — And shall we ever see such 
magnificent energies moving heaven and earth for the 
happiness of the human race, instead of its destruction ? 

You reach the university by a narrow street which 
leads to a small plaza, the Patio de Escuelas. On two 
sides of this are the principal entrances, and in the cen- 
tre is a modern statue, about twice as large as life. The 
archives and the rector's office are entered through a 
doorway in what was once the Hospital for the Poor 
Students. If poor students were entertained in such 
magnificence as this, one need not be surprised that 
those in better circumstances were surrounded by lux- 
ury also. The staircase leading to the office is a lovely 
creation, carven with bullocks, horses, and monsters, in 
the spirit of a Greek frieze. The stone of the lower 
portion, like that of the doorway, is eaten away by 
the tooth of time, as if it had long been washed by the 
waves, and waves with plenty of sea-salt in them. The 
doorway is decorated with the effigies of kingi and 
saints, and the arms of Ferdinand and Isabella and 
Charles V. Along the top of the lower building runs a 
balustrade consisting of a congeries of intertwisted 
flowers, animals, and cupids, the last perfection of rich 
stone-carving. 

Down in the corner, at the right, is another beautiful 
doorway, giving access to the Institute and the School 



192 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

of Sciences. Within, as in the centre of the university 
building proper, is a vast, agreeable court with the spa- 
cious arcades about it for promenading, which is a typ- 
ical Spanish feacure. The two remaining sides are oc- 
cupied by plain buildings which were once dormitories, 
and have little to boast of over those of the older sort 
at Harvard or Yale. They are given up to secular uses 
now, the dormitory system having long since been abol- 
ished. 

My student had some relatives living there, and took 
me to see their quarters. There was nothing nota- 
ble to see, beyond the cyclopean thickness of the wall, 
but the outlook upon the sculptured facades and the 
statue was a perfect bit of rcmance. One should look 
much at such a court by moonlight, and I did see it by 
moonlight also. I stopped there one night coming 
home from the Cafe de Oporto when there was nobody 
in it but the sereno, sitting at the foot of the statue, the 
sereno being the ancient watchman, with spear and lan- 
tern, who still guards the Spanish cities. 

The statue is that of Fray Luis de Leon, put up by 
an alumni subscription in 1869. They say the chdr- 
ros^ the simple country-folk, in town fair-time, kneel 
down and say a prayer before it, mistaking it for a 
saint. But why is Fray Luis de Leon, the only statue 
about the university, thus signally honored ? 

In the first place, the tradition of Salamanca is eccle- 
siastical, as the tradition of all Spain is still ecclesiasti- 
cal. The leaders, the universities, which have entered 
the way of modern progress, and even the younger 
school of realistic novelists who have begun for the first 
time to paint the actual manners of the people, have 
to conciliate progress and the new blood more or less 



BEING A BACHELOR OF SAXAMANCA 193 

with this tradition. As to who he was, he was the first 
editor of Saint Theresa, a professor in the university, 
and a mystic poet, still cited as one of the leading poets 
of Spain, the tuneful Swan of Granada. With the small 
scope allowed to free inquiry then, mysticism somewhat 
filled the place of philosophic speculation. He was 
called to his chair largely by the suffrages of the stu- 
dents, who had a good deal to say in those times. His 
popularity, a certain simplicity of character and origi- 
nality in the manner of his instruction, made enemies 
for him, and to such an extent that he was subjected 
to disgraceful penalties and even imprisonment during 
five years. When he was finally vindicated, and re- 
turned to his chair, he said nothing of all his sufferings, 
not a word of malice, but simply resumed his lecture 

with: " As we were saying yesterday " There is a 

world of sweetness in this " As we were saying yester- 
day " Perhaps this alone was worth the statue, and 

the alumni selected better from their long roll of great 
names than might at first appear. 

The chief university building is about the size of the 
University building in Washington Square, New York. 
Its main portal, of drab sandstone, set against the rough 
granite wall, is one mass of medallions, shields, and 
foliage like silversmiths' work. Figure to yourself a 
stained-glass window cut in relief, and you have a good 
idea of it. The cathedral and Santo Domingo are cov- 
ered with the same over-exuberant work. You feel as 
if it ought to be put under glass, and you do not under- 
stand how it has kept its perfect sharpness. The portal 
on the opposite side of the court debouches upon the 
cathedral. The Spanish well understand, as here, how 
to add to the dignity of their public edifices by terraces 
13 



194 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

and flights of steps, and rows of pillars with bronze 
chains between them, which recall the votive pillars of 
the ancients. I have not space to go into the interior 
of these rich edifices. The churches of Spain are full 
of treasures in pictures, marbles, metal-work, furniture, 
every form of treasures. In the mortuary chapels are 
alabaster tombs of ideal loveliness; in all the roomy 
sacristies are the carved wardrobes, fantastic mirrors, 
large copper braziers, for warmth, and ornate beadles, 
depicted by the Spanish-Roman school of Fortuny. 
There is a word to be said as to the rigid severity with 
which religious dissent was repressed in Spain, which 
— now that it all can't be helped — may reconcile the 
amateurs of art to it. The churches were not racked to 
pieces by religious wars, as in all the rest of Europe, 
and have kept their treasures mainly unimpaired. 

The corridors around the fine court, corridors in which 
the students are strolling, or taking a last look at their 
lessons, are adorned with a series of paintings of kings 
and queens who have been benefactors of the univer- 
sity. They are done in black and white, which does 
not seem a very taking idea, and is too modern for 
Salamanca; but we find that every new thing in Sala- 
manca is as modern as the present generation can make 
it. From the corridors open the class-rooms. 

A sculptured staircase leads to the library, which has 
a beautifully wrought old bronze grating before its main 
door, and within, the comfortable air which inheres in 
good old Spanish furniture. But as to books either 
on Salamanca or the university, it has none; not a 
treatise on college manners and customs, no memorabi- 
lia, no portraits, not a book of engravings of any kind, 
not even the poorest lithograph, to show looks, cos- 



BEING A BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA 1 95 

tume, festivities, or historical episodes. It was even 
thought singular that any one should be interested in 
such matters. The " mother of the virtues, arts, and 
sciences," beyond making a hasty catalogue of the 
names of some of her principal celebrities, had appar- 
ently never thought about her past. Not that docu- 
ments of the truly archaic sort were wanting, the old 
manuscripts, state papers, as it were, relating to the 
early events of greatest moment, were plentiful. 

I have seen in the archives the original charters of 
kings, bulls of popes, and letters of noble benefactors, 
with their leaden seals still attached. On the doors of 
a case for manuscripts, were two frescoed views of 
class-rooms in the sixteenth century, with the scholars, 
many in ecclesiastical dress, and others in the university 
gown, which, by the regulations, had to be clerico y ho- 
nesto^ clerkly and decorous. I entered the class-room 
of Fray Luis de Leon, unchanged, like many others 
also, from its original condition. It has been a point 
of pride, in particular, to retain the old benches. They 
were never more than sticks of pitch-pine, roughly 
squared, narrow, one set up higher, and a trifle sloped, 
for a desk ; the other, lower, for a seat. Now they are 
worm-eaten, entirely covered with carven names and 
initials, and polished by all the elbows they have helped 
make threadbare, till they shine again, under the white 
light of the small, high windows. Yet to these benches 
lectured the men who ruled the domain of thought, the 
professors who first translated, for Europe, the Arab 
philosopher Averrhoes and physician Avicenna, who 
taught the system of Copernicus (by a strange contradic- 
tion) when it was esteemed heresy everywhere else; 
who advised Columbus, and sat in the trial of the 



196 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Knights Templars. The old titles of the classes, in 
Latin, are over the doors. My friend showed me his 
seat, in that which is now Law Procedure, and explained 
to me how tired his back often got. 

There is no lack of luxury, however, in the Sala de 
Grados, where the degrees are given, the Paraninfo, 
where the annual commencements take place, nor the 
chapel ; the professors, too, have a most comfortable 
conversation-room for themselves. The chapel is rich 
with precious marbles and hung entirely in crimson vel- 
vet. A student banner, of the united colors of the four 
faculties, used in the procession of Saint Theresa, and 
another of white silk, with keys and tiara upon it, the 
arms of the university, depend from above. The Para- 
ninfo has a raised dais occupying one-half its length, 
and is stately enough to accord with the sessions of a 
Venetian Council of Ten. Behind the deep arm-chairs 
of the presiding dignitaries is hung, as now in almost 
all public deliberative halls in Spain, a portrait of the 
charming young widowed queen with her baby son in 
her arms. In both this room and the chapel were some 
fascinating old benches, perfectly simple in pattern, 
covered with quilted crimson velvet, and on this the 
arms of the university embroidered in gold and silver 
thread. Those are the things that are really Spanish. 

I spent some time in the class-room of Miguel Rodri- 
guez, professor of Spanish and general literature. The 
subject was the dramas of Lope de Vega; the exercise 
was part lecture and part recitation. The professor was 
the author of a work on aesthetics; but, in general, au- 
thors, at least those of note, are not connected with the 
universities. I had found the Spanish novelists at Ma- 
drid serving as deputies, senators, and members of 



BEING A BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA 197 

the queen's council but not as instructors. Perhaps 
Salamanca has had so many great writers in the past 
that she can afford to rest upon her laurels. One 
of them, Hurtado de Mendoza, while yet an under- 
graduate, most likely of this very class-room, wrote 
" Lazarillo del Tormes " and founded the school of 
picaresque romances dealing with low life and vagabond 
heroes. It would hardly have been thought from this 
light beginning that he was to become a grave his- 
torian and statesman, and so notable a personage under 
Charles V. 

There is no distinctive student dress, and scarce a 
trace of any student manners and customs.- Time was 
when the student of Salamanca wore an embroidered 
jacket, small-clothes, a jaunty cocked hat with an ivory 
spoon in it, and a sword by his side. But all this is so 
long of the past that even the date of its disappearance 
is well-nigh forgotten. A group of alleged students of 
Salamanca came to Paris some years ago, on a concert- 
tour. They wore this picturesque garb, were made 
much of, and remained so long away from their studies 
— if they really had any — that some French wag got 
off the following witticism : 

" These are not students of Salamanque : they are 
simply students a la manque.'' 

If it had not been cold, I should have seen nothing 
more than a few every-day young men, in looks and 
dress like all the rest of the world. As it was, they 
were muffled in their cloaks, and the cloak is always ro- 
mantic. It is the custom to line it with various bright 
colors according to the taste, and the borders, thrown 
back over the shoulder, brighten up the rest of the 
costume, which, by preference, is black. The profes- 



198 A HOU^-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

sors, however, still wear, on state occasions, certain 
time-honored gowns, and fine medals of office. The 
great festival is on October ist, the opening of the 
school-year — which closes on June 6th. This, it will be 
seen, is a genuine commencement, for there is none.- as 
with us, at the end of the year. Each faculty has its 
own color: philosophy and letters, light blue; sciences, 
dark blue; law, crimson; medicine, yellow; these shown 
upon cuffs, crown of the cap, and miiceta^ or vel- 
vet cape worn over the gown. The beadles and other 
servitors are also very much gotten up, and there are 
two heralds, such as stand in the Spanish Senate 
and Chamber of Deputies, a survival of the middle ages. 
The programme on this occasion consists merely of 
some addresses. There is no ceremony on the giving 
out of the degrees. The aspirant is called before the 
Board of Three, some little time after he has passed 
his examination, which is partly written and partly oral; 
and the chairman, taking off his cap, gravely salutes 
him as doctor, or licentiate, or whatever his new title 
may be. His diploma is sent him afterward, whenever 
and wherever he wants it. 

Most of the day of my scholar of Salamanca was 
taken up by recitations, and he was consequently obliged 
to do not a little of his studying by lamplight. He 
complained that his winter evenings were often chilly 
and disagreeable. As there are no dormitories, the cus- 
tom is to have rooms in the casas de hiiespedes^ or board- 
ing-houses. The poorer students often bring a week's 
supply of provisions from home — beans, cold meat, etc. 
— or buy provision as they pass through the market, 
and make an arrangement to have it cooked, their whole 
expense by this plan falling within four reales a day, 



BEING A BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA 199 

the real being but five cents. There is plenty of pic* 
turesqueness in this market; the charros supply it, if 
the students do not. The men wear a dignified black 
costume, with bright sash and silver buttons — I wish 
we had farmers who dressed like that; and the women 
bright striped blankets. All around, supported upon 
worn old columns with queer capitals, are half-timbered 
houses, tinted blue or pink, or quaintly frescoed in false 
perspective ; and in the shops and booths, pottery, bright 
handkerchiefs, and dazzling yellow shawls, embroidered 
with birds of paradise. For ten reales, or fifty cents a 
day, the student in comfortable circumstances may have 
his room, light, a breakfast at seven, dinner at one, 
and supper at eight. It will be seen that Salamanca is 
not dear. 

After supper it is the universal custom for all who are 
in funds to go to the cafe, and there, in the midst of 
din and smoke, thick enough to cut with a knife, to play 
cards and dominoes, and talk over their day's adven- 
tures. This is almost the only amusement. It is true 
that some go out to the Campo de San Francisco, and 
^\diy peldta^ like the sons of Dona Maria la Brava, and 
some row and swim in the Tormes, which has green 
and pleasant banks below the town. There are two 
debating societies, which have rooms at the Cafe de 
Paris and the Cafe de Oporto, but even these throw no 
great animation into their proceedings. The Salaman- 
can student looks young, and so he is. Something may 
be allowed to Southern precocity, but we often see him 
finishing the Institute at fourteen or fifteen, and com- 
ing out into the world, after the four or five years re- 
spectively prescribed, a beardless licentiate, or doctor, 
still in his teens. There are very few students at pres- 



200 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

ent, either young or old. I sum up, from the last 
"Memoria," only one hundred and fifty-one in the aca- 
demic department, and two hundred and sixty-two in 
the other three faculties. In the brilliant days of old, 
when Salamanca, Paris, Oxford, and Bologna were the 
four great universities of Europe, the figure of fourteen 
thousand students is continually mentioned ; and I have 
even seen it put down at seventeen thousand. I had 
had my doubts about that fourteen thousand, to say 
nothing of the seventeen thousand; the buildings do 
not look it — the lecture-rooms were not calculated for 
such numbers. I found my doubts sustained by com- 
ing upon a writer who showed that this highest figure 
proceeded from the action of kings and pontiffs, who, 
in their generosity, extended the benefits of technical 
matriculation even to the landlords of the posadas where 
the students lodged, and to the tradesmen who supplied 
them with clothing and provisions. But it seems cer- 
tain that there were at least six or seven thousand bona 
fide students. 

How did a university come to be established here, in 
the first place? Why — in the year 1200 — was Sala- 
manca selected above all other sites? Don Alonzo the 
Wise, its founder, gave as his reason that Salamanca 
was healthy, provided with good water, and all other 
good things. He was ruler of Leon, the first Chris- 
tian kingdom to throw off the yoke of the Moors. Once 
started, it profited by its position at the rear, remote 
from the border wars, which went on recovering ter- 
ritory, little by little, till the Moors were finally driven 
from the whole peninsula. It reaped the advantages of 
the new grandeur of Spain, as united in one for the first 
time by Ferdinand and Isabella, and of the great rise 



I 



BEING A BACHELOR OF SALAMANCA 201 

to prominence of the country in the brilliant period of 
Charles V., who united under his sway a larger empire 
than any previous monarch since Charlemagne. Every 
family must have profited more or less by the plunder 
of the Moors of Granada, and the treasures that began 
to flow in from America, and so they put money in their 
purses and sent their sons, on horseback or on foot, to 
be educated at Salamanca. Among those seven thou- 
sand students were comprised the flower of the nobility. 
Royal privilege exempted the graduates from taxation, 
and made them and their children hidalgos. The uni- 
versity had a court for the government of all its own 
people. At one time it was the custom for the rector to 
be a son of a grandee of Spain, and often those grandees 
also filled the professors' chairs. The representatives 
of each province, as the Biscayans, Castilians, Andalu- 
sians, and Aragonese, consorted closely together, and 
all had their standing feud with the townspeople, as in 
college towns now. The candidate to be received as 
doctor had to sustain a public thesis. The scene of this 
was the Chapel of Santa Barbara in the old cathedral. 
At a very early period he used even to have to pass the 
previous night there in prayer and meditation, much as 
the candidate for knighthood used to watch his arms 
before an altar. One would say this was not the best 
way to obtain a clear head for the next day's examina- 
tion. There were grand processions and banquets, and 
the doctors paid the cost of expensive bull-fights. The 
successful candidate in the examinations would get a 
ladder, climb up by night, and paint on the walls, in 
red, to commemorate his triumph, his initials, name, or 
monogram — with a crest over it, if he had one — and a 
hieroglyphic representing Victor. One can be as cred- 



202 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

ible a witness to this as if he had actually seen it, 
for hundreds, or thousands, of these quaint inscriptions 
still remain. No place was esteemed too sacred for 
them; they embellish not only the college buildings 
and private palaces but even the fronts of the churches. 
They are particularly numerous in the Patio de Escue- 
las, and give the gray stone a decided ruddy tinge. 
May it have been this custom that gave rise to our 
modern expression of " painting the town red " ? 

Philip II. began to ruin Spain, though the disas- 
trous influence did not tell immediately, for, on the 
contrary, it was his reign that witnessed the principal 
flowering of arts and letters. In the reign of his son 
it was well on its way down-hill. The people became 
poor and could not send their sons so far, and many 
other competing universities were opened. At the 
beginning of the eighteenth century the figure of stu- 
dents had fallen to two thousand, and at the beginning 
of the nineteenth to eleven hundred. In 1862 there 
were scarce three hundred, but since that time there 
has been a slight revival. 

There are no glee clubs, no singing groups parading 
the streets, no hazing, no initiations, no planting of class 
ivies, no manners and customs at all. I fear a Yale or 
Princeton boy, who is forever inventing brand-new tra- 
ditions and trying to think they are ancient, would be 
rather ashamed of Salamanca. I would not believe, at 
first, that there was such an absolute dearth of every- 
thing of the mighty past. I almost advertised for a 
manner, and offered valuable consideration for a cus- 
tom. But then I began to see that the originality of 
Salamanca consisted in having none. 



CHAPTER XVII 



IFS " AND " BUTS " THROUGH THE PYRENEES, GASCONY, 
TOURAINE, AND THE ORLEANS COUNTRY 



In another week I was back again in France, entering 
it from the southwest. 

The better and more frequent trains, the more active 
stir of life, were grateful, but I found myself engaging 
anew in the same programme of " ifs " and "buts" all 
through Gascony, the Pyrenees, Touraine, and the Or- 
leannais. Each place had its peculiar charm and each 
its attendant drawbacks; and all had in particular to 
contend with a memory, a persuasive recollection from 
the earlier part of the long journey, that kept daily ris- 
ing into greater prominence. 

A sort of bargain offered at Saint Jean de Luz, a mod- 
est, dull little place, with a beach of yellow sand, just 
over the frontier — good, like much of this district, for 
both winter and summer. The houses, not of gray gran- 
ite, are in open timber- and plaster-work, of a half-Swiss 
or Early English effect, as they are in northern Spain. 
A tradesman of the place would let me have one of the 
latter on a hill, across the port, a large one, well fur- 
nished and with a garden at last, for six hundred francs. 
I exclaimed in surprise at finding it furnished, which I 
had not expected ; and his demands were at first much 
higher, but mon Dieu I enfin — he would let it go at that 

203 



204 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

rather than be at the trouble of taking out the furni- 
ture. Breaking on the wheel would not draw a price 
from a proprietor until he had first shown you the at- 
tractions of his premises. The house had squalid neigh- 
bors, much too close, on one side, though they were 
very good on the other; the drinking-water had to be 
brought up from a public fountain down on the road, 
and other water from a neglected spring at the far end 
of the long garden. Still, this was a chance that did 
not fail to go into my notebook with an especial mark 
of approval. 

Biarritz was too much like Dinard ; it had an ephem- 
eral, hasty look ; the shops were full of the usual sea- 
side knick-knacks, and of English tourists selecting 
keepsakes from them. The villa of the ex-Empress 
Eugenie did not redeem it; could it have been so bare, 
treeless, and ordinary as that in the days of the Empire ? 
Pau, on the other hand, has a good deal of solidity. 
Like Nice, its great contemporary on the other side of 
France, it has an air of being there partly for its own 
people, and not merely for the swarm of passing stran- 
gers. Let us remember that the towns are not of the 
same dimensions; Nice has eighty thousand people, and 
Pau thirty thousand. What is very comfortable about 
both is that they are so well used to receiving strangers, 
and have made such ample provision for housing them, 
that a few more or less do not throw them into a flurry. 
Quarters are not difficult to find, and you see at once 
that you are not expected to sleep on a billiard-table if 
you want to stay there. Then the shops abound with 
everything to sustain life agreeably ; they are numerous 
and substantial, and the fever of novelty being long 
past, and unscrupulous fleecing checked by wholesome 



THROUGH THE PYRENEES 205 

competition, they furnish their goods at about as rea- 
sonable prices as if there were no question of villes de 
saison at all. 

The favor that Pau meets with from the large Eng- 
lish colony is well accounted for by the beauty of the 
site, the magnificent view from the terrace, of the snow- 
crowned Pyrenees and the green and thrifty country 
all round about. In a short promenade I already 
found three lodgments, any one of which would have 
done. They were all, as it happened, on that most 
respectable thoroughfare, the Rue Henri Quatre. The 
dearest of them was eight hundred francs, and it had 
three or four more bedrooms than we should have 
needed. Another, a first story, in the house of a re- 
spectable official, consisting of antechamber, kitchen, 
dining-room, parlor, two bedrooms, and servant's bed- 
room, was but five hundred and fifty francs. Perhaps 
one would not so much need a garden, in a semi-rural 
place like this, living low down, and with such ample 
opportunity to walk in the Place Royale and other spa- 
cious promenades close at hand. 

The chateau of Henry IV., like the chateau of Fran- 
cis I. at Saint Germain, would be better if it had been 
left a little more of its sentimental ruin. Directly un- 
derneath it is a smoking tannery, which scents the town 
in a way it is hard to understand how an enterprising 
ville de saison can put up with. The panorama of the 
snowy Pyrenees, too, is often veiled, for we are in a 
rather moist country, and not a dry one. Consult your 
weather-records; I have heard an acquaintance, some- 
what given to exaggeration by nature, assert that he 
has seen it rain forty days at a time at Pau. You have 
lovely camellias here, and what not beside, but you 



2o6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

have no oranges. The yellow lamps have gone out of 
the green landscape, and leave you sad. 

Arcachon and its flat district, redeemed from the once 
desert Landes, — a whiff of hygienic pine, and a pretty 
glimpse of garden-patch or so in the clearings, but not 
to the purpose. The two large cities of Bayonne and 
Bordeaux each in turn had something stately, smooth, 
green, and pleasant about them, but here was the 
rainy zone of Brittany again. I wanted to get off at 
Angouleme and Poitiers, as I had wanted to get off at 
Coutances and Avranches in Normandy; they occupy 
the same sort of high position, on terraces with borders 
of garden ; but I did not. Tours, in Touraine, focus 
of the best chateau life, and rendezvous of all those who 
esteem themselves most highly in the social way, was, 
for me, forsooth, too large and level. 

It was clear now that a place must be hilly to be truly 
picturesque, and a hilly site is healthier and cleaner. 
The agent I saw had no notable bargains for me. The 
house he showed me in the Rue des Acacias was thor- 
oughly commonplace; and one would need horses, to 
live in the others he indicated, some miles away from 
town. 

Orleans, again, seemed too level. We were getting 
very near Paris now, and from Orleans on, the regi- 
mented fields of choice vineyards that had long embel- 
lished the land gave place to yet flatter, more ordinary 
plain. A second-story apartment, by the grand atrium 
of the cathedral, for one thousand francs, the rooms 
more numerous, but no better, than our own in Paris; 
and a pleasing two-story house, with a high slate roof, 
in the shady little Place Saint Aignan, at twelve hun- 
dred francs: these are the items I noted there. I would 



THROUGH THE PYRENEES 207 

gladly have taken the latter, had it been elsewhere — 
than in storied Orleans. 

Blois alone, thirty-five miles farther from Paris than 
Orleans, — I keep it to the last, — Blois alone checked 
the course of this universal disparagement. Blois was 
hilly, accidente\ or varied, clean, tranquil, not too large, 
endowed with pretty promenades, and amply romantic. 
"Here was not wanting," as Dr. Johnson has it, "the 
private passage, the dark cavern, the deep dungeon, or 
the lofty tower." The silvery Loire reflected its old 
red bricks and bluish slates; round about were vine- 
yards, a rich undulating plain, prosperous villages with 
windmills and castles in their midst; the famous cha- 
teaux of the Loire were close at hand; and, best of all, 
one of the most prepossessing of them was the very 
clou, the centre-piece and clinching argument, of the 
town. Here the houses to rent were in the Place, be- 
side the rich red Louis XIL chateau itself, which the 
painter Marchetti, among others, has rendered with 
such appreciative feeling. One of the houses, unneces- 
sarily large for us, fourteen rooms, with a garden, was 
about twelve hundred francs. Another was seven hun- 
dred francs. It was a queer place, without any windows 
at all on the square, I think ; only its entrance door, 
which, with a very long hall, was wedged between two 
other houses. It was much in need of repairs, but these 
were promised. It was three stories in height, when 
you got to it, and had seven rooms, and a small sunny 
terrace which looked down on the slate roofs of the 
town, old churches, and the ancient bridge crossing the 
Loire. The Loire ought to be a resource for boating 
and swimming in the summer. It was to be considered 
whether its lush meadows, with their essentially French 



208 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

landscape of vaporous poplars, would send us up any 
malarious exhalations. That was noted as one of the 
things to be inquired about. The Chateau of Blois 
was entirely charming, and the strangers coming up to 
look at its warm fagade and see the room where the 
Duke of Guise was stabbed would be something of a 
distraction, if other amusement failed. 

There was another point in favor of Blois, — a strong 
one: it was only four hours from Paris. All the other 
localities mooted would entail long and costly migra- 
tions; if such a place as Blois would do, what a vast 
saving in expense and trouble, besides retaining the 
closer connection with America! Naturally it was not 
the same sort of a change; plenty of brooding skies, 
plenty of winter, might be expected at Blois; but, con- 
sidering the notable economy, some disadvantages could 
be put up with. The lilacs were in bloom in those last 
days, and spring lent her most illusive freshness. 

Arrived in Paris, and the report of the journey sub- 
mitted to the expectant ears of S , we summed up 

the whole subject calmly, and again not at all so calmly. 
We fancied ourselves living, now in face of the Ducal 
Palace at Nevers, now by the Palace of the Popes at 
Avignon, now in the Moorish farmhouse at Algiers, now 
under the red Alhambra tower at Granada, again at 
Saint Jean de Luz, at Pau, and at Blois. We threw 
them out one by one; then threw them back again and 
began anew. 

*' If we should write to the man at Villefranche-sur- 
Mer, and 'see if by any chance that one — the one, you 
know, with the long walk, and the terrace, and the un- 
limited orange-trees — were not rented yet ? " suggested 
S . 



THROUGH THE PYRENEES 2O9 

The suggestion being acted upon, the agent at Ville- 
franche-sur-Mer replied that his villa was not rented. 
He had probably known quite well it would not be, and 
fixed the date of the first of May only to force a decision 
more advantageous to himself. He placed it entirely 
at our disposition; he would put it in order, and we 
could have it from the ist of July. We gladly closed 
with him, and completed the negotiation by mail. 
14 



CHAPTER XVIII 
A FRENCH MOVING, TO THE LAND OF MIGNON's SONG 

Our moving day was in midsummer, the eve of our 
national festival of the Fourth of July. We had to leave 
our fellow-countrymen to celebrate it by the various pa- 
triotic ceremonies they proposed, much more content 
ourselves to celebrate it by being in full progress south- 
ward. 

When this momentous day finally came, the movers 
arrived early in the morning and delivered themselves 
up to a peremptory sort of sack and pillage. In a few 
brief hours, all the domestic conveniences and details 
of artistic effect we had taken so much time and thought 
to place and had flattered ourselves upon having brought 
to so happy a conclusion vanished to ridiculous nothing- 
ness. Everything was whisked down in no time to the 
spacious boulevard before the door. Thus reduced to 
their lowest terms and spread out before the public eye, 
our modest belongings had that shrunken effect that 
always marks such a display. It is pathetic in a way, 
a sort of funeral, that rude upheaval and exposure of 
the lares and penates of a household, with all their de- 
fects, to the garish light of day, and we were inclined to 
assume an air of but casual relationship to them and 
rather hoped the passers-by would not know they be- 
longed to us. 

All was marshalled, as a preliminary upon the com- 

210 



A FRENCH MOVING 211 

modious Paris boulevard that serves so many useful 
purposes in the affairs of its inhabitants. The wide- 
gauge Empire arm-chairs that had stood such a deal 
on the balcony, looking off toward the golden dome 
of the Invalides, were unceremoniously bucked and 
gagged as it were, thrown upon their backs and thrust 
in amid enveloping straw in long packing-cases. The 
tables were expeditiously stood upon their heads, turned 
into boxes and filled in with a random collection of 
breakable articles. The workmen in their professional 
pride of making a very neat fit in the cases, wrenched 
apart the joints of some few piece-s of furniture never 
naturally meant to be treated in that way; but on the 
whole the work was well done. We say nothing against 
our packer, M. Mazagran, let us say, of the Rue du 
Four, on that score, nor against his price, which was 
sixty-five francs for the labor and the cases complete. 
Where we do find just fault with Mazagran, however, 
is for engaging on our account an evil-visaged cartman, 
one Grumet, let us say, of the Rue de I'Odeon. Grumet, 
he represented, owing to the season's being dull, would 
cart the goods for us to the freight depot, the distant 
depot of Bercy, for even less than the moderate tariff 
of the railway's own cartage bureau. 

Now Mazagran was a person of prepossessing looks 
and manners, but Grumet certainly looked any and all 
of the small villanies he might commit. We ought not 
to have trusted him. Grumet contrived not to reach 
the depot of Bercy at all that night, and I was obliged 
to depart without being put in possession of the railway 
receipt for my goods, the note of the weight and his 
charges. In consequence he was enabled to collect 
through the railway company about three times the 



212 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

proper amount. Hence too a reclamation or claim for 
restitution against the company. 

Has it ever happened to you to make a reclamation 
against a French railway or other large public body ? 
Well, if not, don't! — unless you do it in pursuance of 
the general duty one has to complain in the interest of 
others when things are wrong. They will tire you 
out; they will call attention to hitherto unnoted regula- 
tions that vitiate your claim on the one side even while 
it may be allowed on the other; they may condescend 
to the point of regretting the circumstance and under- 
taking that it shall never happen again. At length 
they will peremptorily "consider the incident closed." 
I fancy the cases of remuneration in actual cash for 
loss sustained are as rare as those of dying for love, 
as explained by Sancho Panza. 

"There are those who talk of it," says Sancho, "but 
as for doing it, believe it Judas." 

I wish I could say there were no grievances of cor- 
responding nature in England or the United States, so 
that I might complain more bitterly, but that would be 
rather too much to maintain. 

You can transport freight either by Grande or Petite 
Vitesse, — by Great Quickness or Little Quickness. 
Furniture would naturally go by Little Quickness. It 
might arrive within four or five days, and it must arrive 
within a fortnight as the maximum. An extra half-rate 
per ton is charged for furniture, with extras besides for 
trunks, etc., which thus do not escape the usual luggage 
tariff. If you take an entire car, un wagon complete you 
get a somewhat lower rate, but you have to pay for five 
tons complete. In taking an entire car, also, it is sup- 
posed that you can pack your effects in it very carefully, 



A FRENCH MOVING 2I3 

and, as there is nothing to interfere with them, you 
may save the expense of boxing. I have tried that plan 
twice. Once it did very well ; but on the second occa- 
sion, in returning from a sojourn in Italy, everything 
was turned topsy-turvy, probably by the customs officers 
at the frontier, and plenty of things were broken. I 
was assured, in answer to observations on this point, 
that " from the moment " that the car was a " wagon com- 
plet'' the company was not in any way responsible. 
From the moment that it was a wagon complet, also, — 
and this seemed the most mysterious of all, — the com- 
pany could not grant you the advantage of its own 
cheap rates of cartage, but threw you into the hands of 
outsiders. Thus, on the one hand one set of difficul- 
ties, and on the other another. You could take your 
choice; it amounted at about the same thing. 

In the present case, the railway charge was fifty dol- 
lars to transport about a ton and a quarter weight of 
household effects from Paris to Villefranche-sur-Mer, 
close by Nice, a distance of about seven hundred miles. 
Add ten dollars for cartage at either end, and then our 
railway fares, and you have about a hundred and twenty- 
five dollars in all to join to the very moderate rental of 
the coming year, as the condition of reaching it. Really 
cheap living abroad would of course mean that, having 
got to a cheap place, you should never budge from it. 

While our effects went by Marseilles, entirely through 
French territory, we ourselves, by way of variety, went 
by Turin. I recollect that, in taking the train, from 
the Gare de Lyon, we were almost as much incommoded 
in fleeing the great Exposition as if seeking the thick 
of it. People had been to see it and now were going 
back to their homes again. But, with all the crowd and 



214 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Other drawbacks, there could hardly be a more satisfac- 
tory moment than was ours when we were fairly in the 
train, with the prospect of going by such pleasant ways 
to our yet pleasanter destination. 

The infant born in Paris, and registered with all the 
due formalities at the mairie of a Paris arrondissement^ 
was taking his earliest journey out into the world, and 
he must plunge the very first thing, forsooth, through 
the Mont Cenis tunnel. He smiled, with a mile or so 
of mountain upon his head, as if it were the merest 
trifle ; surely the contrast was grand. The people in the 
train were charming to him. I don't know whether 
or not people in a train are always charming to an in- 
fant, or I ought to mention it to the especial credit of 
French kindness of heart. They managed to give him as 
many as two places complete, to make a little bed upon, 
though he was not provided by the railway company 
with any at all. He had arrived at an age to " take 
notice," — to interfere, with courteous good-humor, in 
the conductor's punching of tickets, and to admire the 
clinquant of officers' uniforms, — which I am told is an 
important moment in the human career. There is a 
certain warrant in speaking of even so small a midget, 
in the disproportionate part he had contrived to take in 
all this matter of the choice of houses, gardens, loca- 
tions, and climates. 

Smooth, calm, restful Turin was a grateful relief after 
the roar of Paris. If we had not already chosen, there 
was a pretty furnished villa, at two hundred and fifty 
francs for the season, upon the grass-grown top of the 
small neighboring mountain of the Superga, where the 
kings of Savoy are buried. It would not have been 
at all unpleasant to have. 



A FRENCH MOVING 215 

We passed a week at Alassio, in the Genoese Riviera. 
It was on the smooth sands of that pretty resort, where 
summer bathers succeed the winter residents, that the 
dispatch we were waiting for reached us announc- 
ing the arrival of our effects. We took train, sped- 
through the long series of Rivfera towns, great and 
small, each at the mouth of its dry torrent, of the same 
type, each with its embowering orange-trees and palm- 
trees, and through tunnels so numerous that somebody 
has aptly compared the journey to riding in a flute and 
looking out through the stops, and arrived at Ville- 
franche-sur-Mer, from the eastward. 

I looked for the effect upon my companions. The 
edge of the novelty had been a little taken off, in my 
own case. There is a greater pleasure in these matters 
than enjoying them one's self: it is to see others en- 
joy them. Both approved, but S not unreservedly. 

The cliffs approach nearer the shore here, and there 
was at first a rather sun-baked and arid effect as com- 
pared with the fuller greenery of« AlassiO. It was 
not till we were amid the embowering shades of our 
own domain, not, indeed, till the fascination that inhered 
in every detail of the prospect was experienced, that 
the new life began to be as full of charm as of strange- 
ness. 

A town of thirty-five hundred inhabitants, looking 
what it is, a survival, if not from the fourteenth century, 
when it got its name and privileges as a free city from 
Charles of Anjou, at least from times but little following 
that, since when it has undergone slight change. If 
there be one casual figure more often seen than another, 
it is that of an artist sketching the approach leading 
to it, and the bold group of buildings, once part of 



2l6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the maritime dignity of the dukes of Savoy, when this 
was their port and Nice was their capital. A vestige 
of Saracen tower juts up piquantly among the rock- 
ledges high above; and it has always seemed to me that 
those formless bits of wall down at the edge of the 
limpid water, below the parapeted walk, may well 
enough have belonged to the works of a Roman or 
Saracen port, vastly more ancient than that which shel- 
tered the galleys of Emmanuel Philibert, and has come 
to shelter the fine yachts and men-of-war of many na- 
tions, and an important division of the French Mediter- 
ranean fleet. 

It was this union of antiquity with the rest that chiefly 
attracted me to Villefranche. Most of the Riviera 
towns, that is to say the important ones, like Nice and 
Cannes, where people make it a matter of fashion to 
live, are new, in spite of a quite impossible section of 
" old town " pertaining to each. Climate is everything, 
and one is constantly tempted, in seeing the dwellings 
in which the stranger colony house themselves, luxurious 
though they may be, to quote the opinion of the Chev- 
alier Chardin, who found that " where nature is easy and 
fruitful art is rude and little known," Villefranche was 
not much sought by the villa residents, though now, when 
an enterprising mayor talks of gas-works and an electric- 
light plant, and the premier of England is upon the ter- 
ritory of the commune, and Indian rajahs and American 
millionaires close by at Saint Jean and Beaulieu, there 
is no saying how long its isolation may continue. 
There were a few boxlike houses, close to the parade- 
ground, in the town, occupied by the pleasant young 
officers of the garrison, and a few quite small villas, all 
furnished, I think, scattered round about. You might 



A FRENCH MOVING 217 

have had one for about twenty dollars per month, but 
they were too near the dust and glare of the white route, 
too public, too cramped as to ground, for my taste. 
Americans are continually taxed with liking to live in 
the full light of publicity, but surely no one who has 
looked into the matter can maintain that there is not a 
far greater proportional care among Americans than 
abroad for the genial seclusion that constitutes the rest- 
fulness and charm of a home. 

The great chateaux behind their jealous walls ex- 
cluded, nothing is harder to find, for moderate means, 
than a detached house where the c/iez soi can be enjoyed 
quite secure from intrusion or public annoyance. Even 
where the first outlook would seem to be favorable, 
things are soon discovered which expressly defeat the 
object. Often it is the way the gardener or custodian 
is located. I have seen one place, for instance, spoiled 
by lodging the gardener exactly under the charm- 
ing terrace, so that not a sight or sound of his family 
life could be escaped; and naturally they could not 
live without moving and breathing. Again, just as the 
peasant population concentrate in villages that imitate 
the street of a solid town, and do not live on isolated 
farms, so there is a much too sociable bunching together 
of houses even in properties where a great extent of 
ground is offered. The garden, if of any size at all, is 
considered as a thing apart, and the right to cultivate 
it is tenaciously held to, or else it is yielded only at a 
large increase on the original rent. What is usually 
granted is only the right of promenade, and of course 
the right of promenade may have to be shared with 
many others. Alas! even our Villa des Amandiers, as 
I shall call it, had one or more of these defects; and 



2l8 A. HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

though we did not find out the really serious one till 
near the end, it was even then much too soon. 

Little Quickness had deposited our furniture at the 
small station, under the slope. No carrier (no cabs, 
either) was to be looked for at so primitive a spot. At 
a limestone quarry I found some teamsters, and induced 
them to take their large drays away from that work and 
transport the goods up the hill for us. One must climb 
in that country; the Riviera is the sunny south slope of 
Europe, and on that slope but few level sites for houses 
are found. The typical plan of the rise is a series of 
terraces like a vast flight of steps, each level supported 
by a retaining-wall. The labor and money put into 
retaining-walls alone have been prodigious; had the 
expense not been distributed over centuries, could they 
ever have been built at all ? 

A narrow, cool street, with a strip of neatly kept 
brick pavement in the centre, the Rue Droite, received 
us as we entered the town. The people in the little 
shops, who could almost have touched us as we went 
along, regarded us with an indifferent curiosity. At 
the crossing, by the market stairs was standing a little 
group, as it was always standing there, which might 
have been a chorus assembled to discuss the fortunes of 
some confrere^ in a piece at the theatre. There was 
always a mariner or two in it, for Villefranche is a most 
marine town. As it enjoys the unusual distinction of 
receiving scarcely anything but the aristocracy of the 
sailor's profession, the man-of-war's men, and these can 
be kept under strict martial orders, there are no dis- 
cords, no squalor, no noisy establishments, even at the 
water's edge. Down there, a dusky street, called the 
Rue Obscur, runs completely across the town beneath 



A FRENCH MOVING 219 

the houses, and you see men leading donkeys into it, to 
put them up in mausoleum-like stables. 

There is no "architecture," as such; that is to say, 
nothing magnificent, scarcely any carving, no luxury of 
decoration. It is not the custom of the country. One 
might quote Chardin again: "Where nature is easy, 
art is little known." But there are plenty of ancient 
dates; escutcheons, nearly lost under lime-wash; re- 
markable straining-arches; moulded door-heads; quaint 
corbeling and chamfering of house-corners; and, above 
all, the fantasies growing out of every variety of level. 

Above, we found a red-gray Vauban citadel, with 
moat and drawbridge, and palm-trees growing out of 
some free space in the interior; and above the whole, 
on a majestic hill, the ancient fort of Mont Alban, a 
landmark to all the country of Nice from far and near. 
When, in 1560, Emmanuel Philibert was building these 
gray old monuments, it seems he was within an ace of 
being snatched away by Barbary pirates. These forts 
could be knocked to pieces with a single shot from one 
of the guns of the Formidable or the Dugicesclin^ or 
other of the dozen full-armored ships that come and lie 
here, dark and leviathan-like, in cruising back and forth 
from Toulon. So they serve no more useful purpose 
at present than the storage of clothing and the like, 
except as they embellish the landscape to the eye of 
the painter. That they certainly do, and it is more 
than will ever be said of the sullen, mound-like, half- 
hidden modern forts that crown every high mountain 
peak around, to watch the Italian frontier. The Mont 
Alban fort was directly over our heads, from our villa, 
like a dream-castle, which we used to see through the 
upward vistas of the olive orchards. 



220 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

The villa was ten minutes or more from the town. 
We went up by a charming sentier in an olive orchard, 
a short cut that was always useful to us, leaving the 
great gate to some more leisurely time. An olive or- 
chard is not unlike an apple orchard. On the one hand, 
it is not to be compared to the apple orchard in foliage 
or fruit; but, on the other, it is perennially green, and 
it allows you to conjure up your classic traditions: you 
are at liberty at any time to imagine you are in a sacred 
wood with Apollo and the nymphs. 

I went on in advance, and threw open every door and 
window. Adriano, the Italian peasant who farmed the 
place on shares, gave me a most obliging hand. Here, 
the sweet music of Mignon's song, " Connais-tii le pays ? " 
should have softly breathed ; and, had there been any 
one of accurate memory, he should have recited the 
invocation of Melnotte, Prince of Como, to his palace, 
— lifting to eternal summer its marble walls, while every 
breeze was heavy with the scent of orange groves. 



CHAPTER XIX 

A YEAR IN A MEDITERRANEAN VILLA 

Imagine it done. The rest come on. They arrive. 

Well, then here is the Villa des Amandiers! I wish 
I could convey the vivid feeling attending that trans- 
fer from the gloom and chill of Paris, from vast, clam- 
orous, craniping, high-stair-compelling Paris, to that 
sweet and perfumed air, the empire of the sun, country 
life, two-story levels, the expansion of amplest elbow- 
room, but it would be useless to try. 

It was not really " a palace lifting to eternal sum- 
mer its marble walls," but a plain, large, comfortable 
two-story house, stuccoed and lime-washed. It was 
fifty feet long and of shallow depth, so that all the im- 
portant rooms came squarely to the south. On the top 
was a loggia^ once open, now glazed in, of which, after 
fitting it up as a half-studio, we ultimately made a fine 
winter playroom for the aggressive infant. What a 
cabasse, as his /^/m-speaking attendant called it, there 
used to be! What a merry shouting used to descend 
distantly from there, robbed of all its terrors! 

Just now it all looked its worst. When we left it, it 
was much more the ideal of what a villa by the Medi- 
terranean ought to be than at first, for I had not fore- 
seen its capacities in vain. Since our time it has de- 
clined anew ; and if, by chance, any one should be 
inspired with sufficient curiosity to go in our wake and 

221 



222 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

look it up, finding the terrace bare of all its embellish- 
ments and the house left to its nakedness, he might 
think no great enthusiasm justified. It stood in the 
centre of a large estate, with great variety of scenery, 
in which we had the right of promenade, and we were 
to pay six hundred francs a year. This seemed ridic- 
ulously inadequate at the time, I should almost have 
justified the proprietor in charging roundly in addition 
for his delicious climate. But I heard afterward that 
an artillery captain, of the garrison, had the house for 
but five hundred francs. 

A long shady walk, some three hundred feet in length, 
led out from the dooryard terrace, in which we found 
all sorts of favorable nooks and surprises. Below it was 
a garden overflowing with oranges and roses. A whole 
vast domain, cultivated and wild, cliffs, wood, orchard, 
garden, leading up to a remote iron gate opening into 
a fragrant pine forest, had fallen to our lot and awaited 
our explorations. 

At six o'clock the tops of our bulky packing-crates 
appeared, coming up the inclines. It proved to be a 
night of full moon, almost as bright as day, and, late 
though we began, everything was finally unpacked with- 
out the necessity of so much as lighting a candle. 

But a most unromantic circumstance disturbed our 
first night. Who could have foreseen mosquitoes in the 
Riviera ? Who has ever written about them, what poet, 
what traveller? The only mosquitoes I know of that 
have got into poetry are those that recalled Mireio to 
life, when she fell, overcome by sunstroke. " Vite, 
jolie^ leve-toi^'' they said. "Quick, pretty one, rise, 
for the heat of the salt marsh is deadly." But though 
that was in Provence, not far away, it was at the mouths 



A YEAR IN A MEDITERRANEAN VILLA 223 

of the Rhone, where they might be expected. We were 
almost eaten alive by mosquitoes, and hence much on 
foot that night, but there was the redeeming advantage 
of the mysterious vistas of the orchard and the long 
walk flooded by the radiance of moonlight, and the 
somnolent croak of frogs and tree-toads, which always 
seemed to keep up their regular sing-song till the moon 
went down. 

The truth is that mosquitoes must be counted with 
from June, or earlier, to December. The very first 
thing to do, the next morning, was to go to Nice and 
procure the necessary nettings, and then these pests 
were reduced to their proper place. As to fleas, in these 
countries, to some extent you have them always with 
you, and a certain philosophy must be cultivated from 
the beginning. We had the train to go to Nice, but it 
was a long pull up and down the hill, and we generally 
went by the omnibus, which passed our gate nearly 
every hour. It took you to Nice, about four miles away, 
by the lower Corniche road, — a famous drive which 
affords some of the loveliest and most satisfying views 
in the world. 

I proceeded at once to veil the too glaring brightness 
of the house and of a small pavilion opposite our win- 
dows with quickly growing vines; to set orange-trees, 
roses, and oleanders in boxes along the front, and pots 
of flowers on the parapet of the terrace; to abolish the 
gravel and sow grass-seed, making a refreshing carpet 
of green; to put a rustic seat in a corner; and to es- 
tablish a rustic hood over the west doorway, which 
morning-glories and a climbing rosebush were soon 
to wreathe. When an awning was stretched over the 
greater part of the terrace, it became a fine spacious out- 



224 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

of-door chamber preceding those of the house. The 
making of the grass-plot was a work of difficulty : the 
ants carried off the seed by the peck ; the sun scorched 
it; it needed interminable watering; and the native 
critics looked upon it with smiling disdain, — for, in- 
stead of verdure, a stretch of arid gravel before your 
door is considered a most correct and desirable rural 
feature, — but it was finally a success. 

To honor the great god of day, in whose cult we so 
largely came to the south, I had also the fancy of adding 
a sun-dial as an ornament to our fagade. There were 
plenty of them upon old-fashioned buildings in the 
country, but the art of making them seemed to have 
disappeared. I could find no one to establish it for 
me, and so was obliged to do it myself. A large bor- 
der and frame surrounded the hour lines and figures, 
and at the top was my motto from Ecclesiastes, at last 
carried into actual realization, *' Truly the light is sweet, 
and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun. " 
Perhaps it was not worth all the figuring it cost, all the 
climbing up and down Adriano's borrowed ladder, but 
the gnomon was finally set so as to tell the time within 
five minutes, and that was an aid in a confusion of 
many watches and clocks. 

The plan of the Villa des Amandiers had several ex- 
cellent things about it. I cannot call it a typical plan, 
for it was a better house than many that cost much more 
money. A tiresome square box-like plan is now most 
prevalent, but ours belonged to an earlier day. 

We put a comfortable sofa, chairs, and pictures in the 
wide entrance hall, which became a lounging-place 
while waiting for dinner, or after it. The dining-room 
opened to the left through a small ante-chamber; on 



A YEAR IN A MEDITERRANEAN VILLA 



225 



the right were storage-rooms, of which more presently. 
The dining-room was frescoed complete with a view on 
each wall representing marine landscape of the coast. 
It was not high art, but it was not badly done; it was 




^i-:\ 


rii- 


"t 




1 








. FOR 


STORE 


0LIVE5 


ROOM 


6e 



on 



, cups, 
mantel were 



PLAN OF THE VILLA DES AMANDIERS. 

in good taste and original at least. Our bottles 
and candlesticks on the sideboard and 
mixed up in an amusing way with the landscapes against 
which they stood, as a sort of naturalistic foreground. 
15 



226 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

The kitchen had a tolerable range, — they usually 
have only primitive charcoal holes, — and water from a 
spring, which ran at first, but later didn't and wouldn't, 
owing to want of the proper repairs. Water was then 
taken from a pipe on the terrace, rising from an irrigat- 
ing basin belonging to the system of the Nice Water 
Company. The works of the company are now extended 
all along this main part of the Riviera; and, though 
they still leave much to be desired, they have been a 
blessing to it second only to the opening of the railway. 
Water for drinking came from a deep well at a distance; 
and generally the finishing touch to the banquets faith- 
ful Angele set for us, at the beginning of the long walk, 
month in and month out, was to bring cool water from 
it in a dripping green Moorish-looking jug and with 
this a handful of wild flowers or a particularly choice 
rose or two which she always had a knack at discovering. 

The principal part of the house was upstairs. That 
was what I always liked about it, both because, if there 
were any dampness below, as there is apt to be on the 
best of ground-floors, we were high and dry above it, 
and the air is always better somewhat above the soil, and 
the salon windows were at such a height in relation to 
the trees as to give their ravishing views veiled and 
softened, but in no way impeded. When at night the 
house was closed and we had retired thither, it seemed 
as if we had climbed up our ladder and drawn it up 
after us, like Robinson Crusoe in his secure bower. 
We looked across the harbor to the long green back of 
Cap Ferrat, and thence to the open sea. It would be im- 
possible to be extreme in saying how blue that water was, 

Charles V., Francis I., and I don't know what great 
paladins beside had landed in our harbor. Sometimes 



A YEAR IN A MEDITERRANEAN VILLA 227 

it gave us a patriotic feeling to see the American flag 
waving pinkishy down there, on one or a quartette of 
the new white cruisers. They gave entertainments in 
the winter, and then Villefranche was ajam with all the 
disposable carriages of Nice; but I think this must 
have sounded better at a distance than it really was, for 
there was motion on, and the weather was more often 
than not rude and cold. Our real view was from the 
loggia at the top of the house; but this was almost 
too wide and dazzling a panorama, and we used to 
keep it as our tour de force. 

As the doors of communication were all opposite one 
another, quite a stately sort of effect could be got by 
leaving them open the whole length of the suite. I re- 
member how the sun used to throw the patterns of the 
window-guards in a line upon the red-tiled floors. The 
westward view ended in the bedroom window, with the 
green tracery of the orchard seen through it. . The whole 
house was stone and brick ; we could not possibly have 
burned down. It is a curious thing that there was not 
a right angle, and perhaps hardly a really " plumb " 
perpendicular in it. I have noticed the same thing 
in other houses; I do not quite know how universal it 
is. It was built by ''rule of thumb," but the grossest 
rule of thumb would hardly make one side of a room a 
foot longer than the other, throw the front and back out 
of parallel with each other and with the natural align- 
ment of the building lot, and so on, except on purpose. 
I have been told that it is considered unlucky to have 
regular symmetry in those matters. 

Now as to the storage space below. These rooms 
were reserved for the storage of the olive crop, and 
were entered from an outer door. They were an ele- 



228 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

ment in the cheapness of the house, and, as our family- 
was small, we could amply spare the space. There is 
rarely a separate granary for crops, and this dated back 
to a time when the proprietor, though well to do and 
living at his ease, liked to have things under his own 
eye. Furthermore, as the olive crop is good only every 
two years, and this was the off year, there was very lit- 
tle in it. Adriano's women-folk were all the winter 
gradually picking up the small olives, as they fell, and 
when he got a small pile together on the stone floor 
he used to carry them off up toward Saint Andre, to a 
rude mill resembling an American cider-mill, and have 
them ground into oil. 

We arrived there in midsummer, and expected only 
to settle our traps, and go away to the mountains 
as soon as the necessity came; but the necessity never 
came. I can hardly hope to set the mode, — that is 
rather for those so opulent that no suspicion of economy 
can enter into their movements ; but I maintain sincerely 
that the Riviera is almost more agreeable in summer 
than in winter. Instead of an advance to extreme heat 
from the mildness — or shall I say chilliness? — of winter, 
a surprising moderation and evenness of temperature 
are found. There is no heat comparable to that of the 
suffocating sort at New York and other places where 
much moisture abounds in the air. Owing to the dry- 
ness, there is, in summer as in winter, a remarkable differ- 
ence between the sun and the shade. The shade of 
the merest bush by the glaring white hot road will 
often be a sufficient protection. I never found the air 
enervating; it was always favorable to physical exer- 
tion; and that was a surprise, too, for I had feared to 
find a sort of tropical languor. 



A YEAR IN A MEDITERRANEAN VILLA 229 

Our tall cliff threw its grateful shadow over us; the 
sea-breeze fanned us; we carried umbrellas in the sun; 
and went down and bathed in the harbor. The ground 
was as dry as a bone ; you could throw yourself upon 
it at ease anywhere. Some new wild flower was always 
blossoming along the garden-path; roses sprung out of 
that soil like weeds, and almost every weed was fragrant. 
Wild thyme, particularly, grew in great profusion, and 
mingled its balsamic perfume with that of eucalyptus and 
pine, all brought out at their best by the genial warmth. 

The place was an old one; I have found it marked on 
an Italian ordnance map dating years before Nice was 
ceded to France. The proprietors lived in Italy, as 
many owners of property about Nice still do, and left 
us in the hands of an agent, who served neither his mas- 
ter's interests nor ours. It had been stately, and was 
now rather neglected; not too much, — just enough to 
give it another delicate sort of charm. I have rung the 
changes on that sort of attraction considerably, have 
sought it in many countries, and do not tire of it. 
Those who want only the trim and proper will disap- 
prove but others will understand us. 

I preferred it that there were only some prehistoric- 
looking piers left of what had once been a conservatory, 
and that the grass was growing on the long walk. That 
long walk was the clou^ the principal charm of the place. 
It is a feature the older gardeners so well understood, 
and which is far too much neglected in our day. Let 
makers of symbolisms properly explain it. Our long, 
straight walk led on and on, like a clear and pleasant 
course marked out in life free from uneasy turnings 
and doublings, — free from the attempt to make some- 
thing seem what it is not, and to make the petty great, 



230 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

by fatiguing hypocrisies, which are so much the aim of 
the modern landscape gardener. It was almost as green 
underfoot as overhead, and nothing was more restful. 
It ended at the cliff, where I set up two large urns on a 
bit of low wall. In the side of the alley opened vistas 
of the sea with white sails upon it, like windows set 
with lapis-lazuli and pearl. 

As to a becolumned fa9ade which had been established 
against the chief water-tank, I must admit that that 
was really too much out of repair. There was a roccola^ 
such as is still used in Italy, — a shallow basin for luring 
small game-birds down to drink, with shelters for the 
fowlers to spring their nets and catch them ; but this 
was a thing long of the past, and forbidden by the law. 

The property contained other villas. There was a 
lieutenant of the garrison, with his orderly, in a cottage 
at the gate; the commandant of the place occupied the 
principal villa; while opposite us was a pavilion which 
had been tenanted at times by an officer alone or an 
artist, and was taken for a couple of months, soon after 
our arrival, by a nice old abbe, whose cassock and gray 
head lent themselves well to the picturesqueness of the 
scene. If we could have just the right sort of neighbors, 
it was naturally much more interesting than to have 
none. Always in the hope of seeing some novelty 
and improvement arrive from that source, we left the 
opportunity to dispose of it open to our landlord, whose 
ideas of taste were quite different. We should have 
hired it ourselves; and yet that was an expense which 
otherwise there was no need of our incurring. No, it 
never should have been built there. 

We dined upon our terrace month in and month out. 
I recollect that a lamp used to burn almost as steadily 



A YEAR IN A MEDITERRANEAN VILLA 23I 

there, if we were late and had occasion for one, as in a 
salon. The infant dozed there in a hammock or played 
in a rustic bed, shut in with his toys, safe from all harm. 
He joined his chirping to that of the birds in the boughs 
over his head. He passed almost his whole existence 
out-of-doors, and gained a prodigious fund of health 
and strength. His effects, the chairs, rugs, books, 
anything and everything remained out about as well by 
night as by day. And the rain ? There was none. 
When there came the first brief shower, a few weeks 
after our arrival, we sat close to the doorway in the hall, 
watching it with a pleasure I have never got out of a 
shower elsewhere. Every drop had a preciousness from 
its rarity. The thirsty orange-trees in their boxes took 
the ample drenching with a refreshment no mere water- 
ing-pot could ever give them; the rain-odor came up 
gratefully from the grass-plot and paths; the carelessly 
dancing blue sea below was beaten down for once to a 
peaceful gray. 

The place was cultivated by Adriano, who had a stone 
house of his own, making an upper story to the com- 
mandant's stable. He had never been to school. He 
had come from Italy, near the Loano region, only a 
couple of years before, yet he had learned French very 
well, though his wife and his mother could not speak 
a word. For his knack in turning his hand to a lit- 
tle of everything we agreed in thinking him quite as in- 
telligent as the usual Yankee farmer. Our agent — 
whose opinions, having found him slippery, we did not 
trust — used to grumble that he was not enterprising, 
and did not get enough out of the place; but Adriano 
said that they should have given him a mule and other 
better facilities to work the ground. 



232 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

His principal resource was the olives. Then he had 
caroubes^ a long, sweet bean, very good food for horses, 
which is said to have been the original locust of John 
the Baptist, when he ate "locusts and wild honey." 
It was more profitable to sell the product of the orange- 
trees in the flower than the fruit. The orange blossoms 
go to the perfumeries. I have seen them sell as low as 
fifty centimes a kilogramme, and they have been as high 
as two francs and a half. Fancy, ten cents for over 
two pounds weight of orange blossoms! We paid Adri- 
ano two cents a dozen for oranges. They were small, 
and by no means equal in quality to oranges of Califor- 
nia or Florida; but they were, at that price, a welcome 
and hygienic luxury in which one could afford to revel. 
Adriano had not gone in much for flowers for market, 
the great industry of the region, but he used to talk of 
doing so. Pinks are the most profitable crop, of late 
years. There are farmers who make their living en- 
tirely out of Parma violets. That is a kind of farming 
worth while. It seems that, in the season, a " violet 
train " goes to Paris from this region, the benison of 
their day for the employes in the dry Gare de Lyon. 
It carries tons of the flowers, which are distributed 
thence over Paris, and sold for little more than the 
price here. Adriano may have raised some of the little 
bouquets you buy for two sous apiece at the Arc de 
Triomphe. 

His mother, particularly erect and well poised, at 
sixty, from the habit of carrying burdens on her head, 
a sort of elderly Esmeralda, occupied herself principally 
in leading about a Cashmere goat and finding choice 
places for it to pasture. His sister, a girl of fourteen, 
used to go about with a sickle, cutting wisps of grass 



A YtAtL IN A MEDITERRANEAN VILLA 233 

for the same goat, — a sort of gypsy-like Ceres with her 
gleaming sickle, endowed with the dark Italian comeli- 
ness, and an excellent model for an artist. She was 
half tamed at first to the service of nurse for the im- 
portant infant, the p'c/ioun, or pigeon; but she put him 
through every species of hair-breadth 'scape, and had 
to be given up. Later on, however, I know not how, 
some wonderful change of character came over her. 
She turned steady and tractable, and we parted from her 
with real regret. Later still there was some falling-out 
in her family, and she went away to take service in 
Italy. I don't know that Adriano was brutal, but he 
believed in governing his household with true peasant 
rigor. 

Angele, a native of Monaco, with a family of her own 
in the village, came up to do the cooking and other 
work. She was quiet, devoted, simple in character, free 
from small wiles and impositions, — a person for whom 
you could not but have respect and sympathy in her 
hard-working lot. Her only failing was shortness of 
memory, a very common one in the class of domestics. 
As she could not read, it was useless to put up before 
her a written list of the things she had to do. It had 
to be endured. The wages for a femme de menage^ in 
that part of the world, for the day, or the best part of 
it, are forty francs per month ; thirty francs are paid for 
a regular bonne. The more modest domestic service 
consists largely of Italians from Piedmont, who work 
for less than the French or Swiss; but then you have to 
put up with a dialect which is not improving, except, 
it may be, to a student of philology. They and the 
speakers of the Nice patois understand each other very 
well. There are even Arabic words in all these coast 



^34 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

patois, as there are Arabic types in the population. It 
is so well known that each spot has its own local varia- 
tion, that once, when we were on an excursion, some- 
body asked us what our patois was. 

The price of provisions scarcely differs from that at 
Paris. It ought to be much cheaper, owing to nearness 
to the land of peculiar plenty over the Italian frontier; 
but the clapping on of heavy duties and the economic 
war with Italy of these late years have ruined all that 
advantage. Why not go and establish one's self in 
Italy then, instead? That is a question to be decided 
by each person for himself. For our part, the access 
to the metropolitan advantages of Nice, to some books 
(it has not very many), theatre, music, the stir of cos- 
mopolite life that winters there, — to be of it, but not in 
it, — these were considerations that had a large share in 
our selection. 

Owx foiirnisseurs^ the people who supplied us with the 
necessaries of life, from the village, made nothing of 
running up and down the hill for the merest trifle. 
They were pleasant, respectful, ingratiating, forgetful, 
jealous of one another about our small custom, yet, 
with all, indifferent to a very un-American extent about 
preserving it. There was a great deal more in their 
small shops than you would think. When there was a 
catch, we had fresh sardines enough to supply the lar- 
gest family, for a few sous ; but generally the fish market 
was at Nice. In these days of the phylloxera you do 
not expect native wines. It was a small cask of Majorca 
that our wine merchant, in the funny little Place de la 
Paix, used to bring us up once a month, and pour out 
into his loaned bottles, after having first carefully 
washed them. His vaulted chamber was like an ancient 



A YEAR IN A MEDITERRANEAN VILLA 235 

resort for brigands, but there was no touch of the bri- 
gand about him ; and, if I thought he would ever see 
this, I should like to congratulate him here on his late 
election as a member of the steady-going municipal 
council, a body which governs the community with the 
order and thrift of so many Connecticut deacons. You 
see no peasant dress in all this country, no wooden 
shoes, no fantastic head-gear. The men are all in 
slop-clothing. They are modern, every-day, self-com- 
placent and independent. 

There was more in their houses, too, than one would 
imagine. Though the entrances in the narrow streets 
were dark and dismal, when you climbed up within, you 
were met by a burst of bright blue sea, all the more 
startling from the contrast, due to the step-ladder char- 
acter of the town. This did not prevent most of the 
women going about with their heads tied up for a 
swollen cheek or other evidence of cold. They ascribed 
the trouble, as a rule, to a coup de sang. If you inquired 
into it, the standard answer was, *' C'est le sang qui fait 
fa'' (It's the blood that does that). And the standard 
remedy, I believe, was to press a five-franc piece against 
the afflicted part. 

Our programme of life was simple enough. The 
commandant's amiable family in the villa below was a 
social resource for us. The parents were domestic, de- 
voting themselves greatly to their children. The com- 
mandant himself, in his hours of respite, ran and romped 
with them. He was of a type which must be increasing, 
now that war has become such a serious and methodical 
matter, and did not correspond at all to the conventional 
dashing military tradition. He was a student and sci- 
entist, in his way, rather than cavalier; a conservative 



236 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

and a church-goer, too. He looked after the efficiency 
of his battalion of chasseurs much as a careful merchant 
might look after his counting-house. 

Next door to us a fine old retired military surgeon 
was interesting himself greatly in a movement, on the 
American plan, which seems yet destined to do much 
good in the country. I name Dr. Jeannel, President of 
the Society of " The Friends of Trees," — Les Amis des 
Arbres. The object of his society is to remedy through 
the impulse of private initiative the grave evils brought 
about by the undue cutting down of the forests. I 
know of no more useful and commendable enterprise. 
Their first important step was to plant the borders of 
the bare parade-ground of Villefranche itself, which 
had made an unsightly spot in the landscape. 

The mayor of our commune, rich and leisurely be- 
yond the good fortune of most mayors, I fancy, pleased 
himself with offering a large hospitality ; and the mayor- 
ess, his kindly helpmeet, made it a benevolent duty to 
include the stranger-residents within their jurisdiction, 
in this way as in others. They entertained not only 
the notables of general distinction, but the artistic, 
musical, and literary class. I have never seen a more 
stately and beautiful room than that in which naval offi- 
cers now danced, a fine voice from the opera at Nice now 
discoursed excellent music, or an actor, or perhaps 
some modest young girl in white, rendered selections of 
poetry or sparkling French comedy. It was always in 
the afternoon ; and the while, through the large win- 
dows, and one end of the room which was entirely of 
glass, shaded with graceful awnings, appeared enchant- 
ing views of orange-and-rose-tree-studded foregrounds 



A YEAR IN A MEDITERRANEAN VILLA 237 

and distant sea, an embowering garden which was with- 
out reserve an earthly paradise. 

The first chilly weather began with the September 
equinox. There came a powdering of snow on the 
hills, and a few flakes fell harmlessly on the roses. In 
the winter we burned little coal, but we often thought 
we were as cold as elsewhere. While we were shivering 
in heavy clothing and going our smartest pace to keep 
up a circulation, we could half fancy the roses about 
us were but of paper, the palm branches of tin, the 
show of eternal summer but a clever theatrical decora- 
tion. The actual bad weather was condensed into a few 
short periods, leaving all the rest free for excursions. 
An unlooked-for drawback to our content with the villa 
appeared: the shadow of the cliff, in winter, stole up 
the long walk, and settled upon us much too soon. The 
early arrival of twilight made it seem even colder than 
it was. The sun set like a beacon fire on top of the 
mountain ; but we could walk up to the top of a pass 
close by and see it shining for a couple of hours longer 
over Nice. It is a drawback incident to the spurs of 
the hills that run down to the sea, and is to be looked out 
for. The sites that wholly escape such an interception 
of sun are rare, and then they are the more exposed to 
the wind. It is true that in Paris we had lived without 
the sun altogether, but here we would not spare one jot 
of it. 



CHAPTER XX 
THE gamblers' PARADISE OF MONTE CARLO 

Once settled, our excursions into the surrounding 
country began. It was a new delight to find that, back 
of the margin of modern settlement on the coast, it 
abounded in mediaeval villages, often perched on all but 
inaccessible crags, as a refuge from Saracen pirates and 
the other terrors of their day. It seemed as if we had 
first discovered all this, so little is said of it. Nothing 
in that way can surpass Eza, above Monte Carlo, — no 
Rhine castle, no stronghold of Umbrian marches or 
Spanish foothills; but Chateau Neuf had the added 
strangeness of being completely abandoned, a lonesome 
dead town all yet standing; and there were Antibes, 
from whose battlements you see the snow mountains, 
all Switzerland piled on top of the Riviera; and Saint 
Paul du Var, with its double fortifications; and Saint 
Jeannet, where the women were said to be all witches. 
Monte Carlo, of course. You must look your fair share 
at that source of lurid interest. Everybody who arrives 
wants to go there as soon as possible, to see if he really 
could lose his money, or perhaps by extra ingenuity 
gain a great pile. 

A large advertisement painted on the pillar at the 
corner by the Cafe de la Victoire, one of the most promi- 
nent positions in all Nice, attracts the attention of visi- 
tors. It reads, in very conspicuous type: "Notice to 

238 



THE GAMBLERS PARADISE OF MONTE CARLO 239 

strangers. Do not go to Monte Carlo." It continues, 
in smaller letters: "In spite of all the chances, you 
most infallibly lose your money. Monte Carlo does 
great harm to the commercial classes by ruining families 
who come to pass the winter on our coast." Then fol- 
lows in the large type again, and in several languages: 
" The ruin of families; " and above the whole is a list of 
" Recent suicides, to wit: Mr. Tr Thurgau, Switzer- 
land. Mr. La Charles de Churras, Argentine Re- 
public. Mr. Br Charles, engineer, Colombia." It 

betrays a foreign hand, you see, from our point of view. 
With our fondness for precision we should not expect 

to produce sufficient effect with this vague Mr. Tr , 

Mr. La , and Mr. Br ; and we should have given 

the professions of all the others as well as Mr. Br , 

engineer. But perhaps they lived on their incomes, 
and had no professions. 

All of the matter in the advertisement is true, even, 
no doubt, to the suicides. It had been up all one 
winter, and I did not observe that the names of the sui- 
cides changed; but it is believed that there are a great 
many more than these, and I should think it a mistake 
not to bulletin the new ones from time to time. The 
Parisian journal. La Nation^ estimates lately that there 
are 200 a year. The placard in question is placed 
among the theatre posters and such flaming announce- 
ments generally as are meant to make sure of the pub- 
lic eye. I don't know by whom it is paid for or in 
what interest. One comes to suspect everything of be- 
ing an artful advertisement for Monte Carlo, even when 
it has the air of being against it. You have no idea of 
what wheels, and wheels within wheels, there are, to add 
yet further aliment to the already absorbing interest in 



240 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the great gambling establishment, over there in the 
principality of Monaco. The siren of play sits on her 
rock, amid the roses and palm trees, above the bluest 
of blue seas, and sings now high, now low; and even 
affects at times a gesture of warning back rash intrud- 
ers, but only to make her charm the stronger. It is a 
by no means small class to whom a touch of the terrible 
is a definite attraction. It is even claimed that an Eng- 
lish philanthropic society, which wages a campaign 
against the place, has been innocently egged on by the 
administration of Monte Carlo, and that the attacks in 
the French and Italian parliaments have been promoted 
by the same administration. In what end ? you will 
ask. Why, simply this, according to the supposition, 
that if any serious trouble were brewing they might be 
foremost with it and control it. The stock company 
is munificently profitable as it is, but if public opinion 
were likely to rise in its might and abolish it, then 
Prince Roland Bonaparte, Prince Radziwill, Edmund 
and Camille Blanc, sons of the deceased founder of the 
establishment, and the other principal stockholders 
would wish to have their interests taken off their hands 
with splendid indemnity, by civilized governments, which 
could hardly afford to abolish brusquely an established 
convention with the principality of Monaco, but would 
have to do everything in a seemly and dignified way. 
Remark the poisoning quality of suspicion. If the story 
be true, the assault is a shrewd move of policy on the 
part of the authorities of Monte Carlo; if it be not, it 
weakens the force of the attacks against the place by 
making even these appear to be in the interest of pri- 
vate speculation. 

The profits of the famous Casino are supposed to be 



THE GAMBLERS PARADISE OF MONTE CARLO 241 

$6,000,000 annually. Of this income the Prince of 
Monaco gets $240,000 for his amiability in allowing it 
to be established upon his territory. The theatre and 
the orchestra, which discourses delicious music twice a 
day, in one of the most beautiful theatres in the world, 
get $60,000. The sum allotted to the press and ad- 
vertising is $200,000. It is true that there are the nat- 
ural advantages of the place, the site, the climate, and 
the romantic charms of half-mediseval Monaco, to aid 
the attractions of the Casino. Some sceptics even 
hold that all the carnivals, the lovely battles of flow- 
ers and the like, along the Riviera are intended only 
as feeders to the roulette and trente-et-quarante. The 
Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway has gor- 
geous colored posters showing the sunny terrace at 
Monte Carlo, but apart from this it is one of the curious 
things how little of the advertising fund appears in any 
tangible shape. Everybody fancies that the press gen- 
erally is "retained." If so, its mission must be of the 
easiest, simply to keep still and make no mention of 
such disagreeable incidents as from time to time arise. 
Perhaps injustice is done them and they only adopt the 
prevailing easy-going tone, on the Riviera, toward this 
peculiar institution; or perhaps again they find it use- 
less to buck against so strongly intrenched an institution, 
which still has its charter for twenty years ahead, and 
which by catering to one of the deepest-rooted impulses 
of human nature brings visitors and money to the region 
whose prosperity they all desire. 

Certain it is that you rarely see anything in them un- 
less some artful paragraph devoted to an extraordinary 
run of luck on the part of some titled visitor or daring 
popular favorite whose example, even in losses, many 
16 



242 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

would consider an honor to follow. Thus I read one 
day: "The Duke of Dino is still playing, encouraged 
by his successes; for he has won back, it is declared, 
all his heavy losses of the early half of the winter. Per 
contra Lord Clifton is supposed to have left §25,000 on 
the green cloth — permanently or not remains to be 
seen." A certain " Sam Lewis," of London, was declared 
a while ago to have gone away winner of something like 
;^8o,ooo. Sam was given the air of grumbling a little 
at the croupiers for niggardly practices which prevented 
his getting away with a good deal more, but my idea is 
that Sam, if it was so, was well pleased and will come 
back another season and have the newspapers say he 
has won again — after pluckily supporting large prelimi- 
nary losses. Then we have Lord Rosslyn, who won 
$40,000 on a single deal at trente-et-quarante, and Mr. 
Wynn, who broke the bank at roulette, by putting the 
highest stakes allowed on a number and all around it 
and seeing that number come up twice in succession. 
When you consider that it is something about as rare as 
being struck by lightning to have the number one has 
staked on come up at all, to have it come up twice in 
succession maybe called luck indeed. At any rate here 
are figures to encourage persons not to be too circum- 
scribed in their play, and this is the trend of the stories 
the journals spread, to earn their alleged stipend when 
they do not earn it by saying nothing at all. 

Even when there are printed attacks, there is to me 
generally something hollow and insincere about them. 
They are either so violent and full of coarse personal 
invective, or otherwise framed with so little judgment, 
as to lie open to the charge of being blackmailing at- 
tempts by writers insufficiently subsidized or again of 



THE gamblers' PARADISE OF MONTE CARLO 243 

beating the big drum for the benefit of the foe they 
pretend to assail. There was a peculiarly ferocious one 
in the winter, in La Nation^ continuing day after day for 
a month, but I think the columns of scurrilous abuse 
lavished upon Prince Roland and Prince Radziwill who 
married the late M. Blanc's daughters; Edmond and 
Camille Blanc, their brothers, and the blonde duchess 
of Richelieu, just married to Prince Albert, ruler of 
Monaco, — I think this rowdy abuse, though, for what 
I know, every word of it may be true, rather calculated 
to excite sympathy for its objects, and to send yet more 
people over to see the great show, whose misdeeds are 
announced with such a tremendous banging of cymbals 
and tom-tom. Monte Carlo is a prodigious and a grow- 
ing evil, but I have not yet happened to see one serious 
attack upon it. 

If there be two hundred suicides a year, you do not 
observe them; in a good many visits I have never seen 
anything disagreeable. They are said, in fact, to be 
very discreetly managed, the bodies being got out of 
the way with extreme expedition, as by a kind of drill, 
and hardly shown even to their families. I do not say 
how many of the total list of suicides I believe in, but I 
believe in a good many, from the deep, fierce current 
of desperate earnestness you come upon in getting the 
least bit below the surface. I believe the roster of sui- 
cides is increased by the individuals who go there to 
try their fortunes as a last resource, finding that a 
proper and dramatic way to make away with them- 
selves. However, they do not appear. I trust their 
ghosts duly haunt the princes and princesses at the 
head of the establishment, in the chosen salons of fash- 
ion where they spend their money far away from the 



244 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

sources of its liberal supply, but on the surface nothing 
is more decorous, bright, and captivating. 

Everybody goes there; Monte Carlo is the joke, the 
source of jolly railleries and witticisms; the ever-ready 
subject of conversations, the ever-available objective 
point of little excursions. If you have a long face you 
are supposed to have lost there ; if you start away hur- 
riedly from a party of friends you are supposed to be 
going there. Cannes is said to be too slow, Monte Carlo 
too fast; Nice between them, is a happy medium; Men- 
tone is slower yet than Cannes, and San Remo a sort of 
little Italian Nice. All these places about Monte Carlo 
are so near to it that to go there is but a matter of an 
hour or half an hour by rail, and the railway manage- 
ment furnishes a liberal supply of trains. There are 
people who will not live at Monte Carlo on account of 
the moral atmosphere of the place or because they do 
not like the public effect of having their letters addressed 
there, but many such people will go there from the 
neighboring resorts nearly every day of their stay and 
make it the central object of their coming to the Riviera. 

When I say everybody goes, I mean not quite every- 
body. I have known of a young English girl, who, 
finding herself there at the end of a mountain excursion, 
with a couple of hours on her hands, would not set foot 
for an instant in the baleful Casino, and never had done 
so. She was not to be tempted either by reading-room, 
concert hall, or restaurant, but preferred to pass the 
interval till train-time waiting tamely in the station, 
a gentle but unmistakable reproach to her less consci- 
entious party. In general there is a happy-go-lucky, 
indifferent tone toward it. The people that frequent it 
are chiefly transients, who would not want to be held 



THE gamblers' PARADISE OF MONTE CARLO 245 

responsible for it, who would not support anything of 
the kind at home, and yet will go, for once, to see the 
greatest and only show of its kind, and will play, heav- 
ily too, for the purpose of experiencing a new sensation. 
Here is a laughing American couple, on the Promenade 
des Anglais at Nice, announcing to a group of friends, 
sunning themselves comfortably there, their approach- 
ing departure. They have got off for a six months' 
holiday, and have Europe partly before and partly be- 
hind them. 

" We leave to-morrow. We drive to San Remo and 
there take the train to Genoa," says the wife, " but first 
I've ten dollars more I want to lose at Monte Carlo." 

She lost ten the day before. That's the way they 
put it; they want and expect to lose, but in reality not 
one, especially after a first taste, but ardently hopes to 
win. Let us follow them over to the place. They 
catch a luxurious train, especially put on for the service, 
which gets them there for the opening of the Casino at 
eleven o'clock. But they have time to breakfast first. 
They proceed to do so either at the restaurant of the 
beautiful new Hotel Metropole, on the terrace at the 
left of the Casino esplanade, or at the Cafe de Paris on 
the right. As it is only a travel experience and again 
"only for once," they must follow the mode. A single 
small dish of asparagus twenty-five francs. The aspar- 
agus, for that matter, is traditional. I picked up Mal- 
lock's "A Romance of the Nineteenth Century" the 
other day to renew my acquaintance with it. You rec- 
ollect that the scene opens at Monte Carlo. " And 
mind," says the Duchess to the waiter as she orders 
dinner for a party at one of these expensive restaurants, 
" we are not going to pay twenty-six francs for a single 



246 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

dish of asparagus, either." I quote chiefly from mem- 
ory; but, in the mean time, asparagus seems to have 
come down only a franc. 

There is nothing at Monte Carlo but the little cluster 
of hotels about the plateau of the Casino and a few vil- 
las on a road above, all very white, fresh, and new. It 
is all in a nutshell. You may walk around the foun- 
tain, glance across a lovely slope of greensward, with 
flowers, like a kind of idealized roulette table, and up 
from it to the lonely Roman watch-tower cresting the 
cliffs, and then you are driven into the Casino as it were 
in self-defence. It is a sort of magnified Brooklyn 
ferry-house architecture, very trim and neat, but of a 
cold and hollow sort of gayety, a gayety as mocking 
as the smile of the croupiers, who have got your money 
away and would not give it back to you again, no, not 
if you were to blow your head off, before their eyes, a 
hundred times. As it is after breakfast and near the 
concert hour, lots of people are going in. Our friends 
go and get a card of admission good for the day. The 
secretaries take your name, address, profession, and 
nationality. In that way, if desirable, they can look 
you up, by a sort of commercial agency or secret ser- 
vice espionage they are said to have, and determine if 
it is worth while to spread special wiles and temptations 
for the considerable capital you may possess. 

Our friends enter the gaming-rooms. A hushed si- 
lence and good order prevail; it is a dignified and 
serious rite that is in progress there; no loud talking, 
no gay laughter are heard; a liveried attendant comes 
and warns any thoughtless monsieur to remove his hat 
from his head, if indeed he has not already left it in the 
dressing-room, as is the custom, to have his hands free 



THE GAMBLERS PARADISE OF MONTE CARLO 247 

for the play. Something peculiar in the illumination 
or some sickly property of reflection in the green cloth 
of the tables casts a sort of pallor over the faces. They 
do not look their best here, or if they do, then heaven 
save the mark! Good looks is not the strong point of 
people who frequent gambling-houses. They are gen- 
erally aged and wrinkled ; such low-browed, flashy types 
of men, aiming hard at respectability ! and such women ! 
especially, such women ! Not only no line is drawn for 
the feminine frequenters of the place, but the swarm of 
cocottes here seems largely those who have outlived 
almost all personal charm elsewhere, and retain only 
the grasping avarice that comes the worst of all, with 
age. Upon such a background any really pleasing fig- 
ure stands out to comparative advantage. 

The crowd is thick around the tables; it is hard even 
to get near enough to lose your money. A very large 
addition has been put on within a few years and more 
tables, but all continue as thronged as ever. Our friends 
walk through the rooms at first; in the earlier ones it is 
all roulette, in the one at the end of the suite the cost- 
lier game of trente-et-quarante. " There is the table 
where we lost yesterday," they say; "we must keep 
clear of that." They find a slight opening, one stand- 
ing behind the other, and pushing past people's sharp 
elbows, they begin. A wheel with numbers is spin- 
ning round in the centre of the table, and on the 
cloth are marked numbers corresponding to those in 
the wheel. This is the main part of the game, which 
is simple and easily understood. A five-franc piece is 
the lowest stake you can put down. 

" You do the playing," says the husband ; " this is for 
your amusement." " I am going to try for once, on a 



248 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

single number, a number en plein^'' says the young 
wife. She puts down her five-franc piece, choosing for 
a number say the figure of her age or the day of the 
month, and the money is swept away as a matter of 
course. Then she plays at the foot of the columns, 
where the chances are a good deal better. She triples 
her stake at once, and, leaving it down, it triples again. 
The little handful of pieces they have gained caused quite 
a flurry of excitement in the couple. " Good luck ! " 
says the husband ; " now go on and make your fortune," 
and he walks away to look at the other tables. 

But she dribbles away the gains in various ventures, 
and apparently with them, too, ruefully enough, the 
last one of the " ten dollars more" she had said she 
wanted to lose. The husband comes back. " You 
shouldn't have wished me good luck, " she says. " It is 
well known that that brings bad luck." 

"Where have you learned that already?" he asks, 
smiling in a superior way, and prepares to play on his 
own account. "I've been studying out the game," he 
says. "You haven't played with sufficient system." 

He watches till some of the simpler chances, as red 
or black, has not come up for three or four times. 
" Now," he says, " the probabilities are excellent that it 
will come up." He plays on it and loses. Next time 
the probabilities are even better yet and he plays and 
loses again. Again a third time, only taking care to 
increase his stake each time so that a final lucky stroke 
will show a profit with all previous losses included. 
Unwittingly he had invented the "Progression," which 
is one of the staple " systems " in use by the gamblers. 
But red or black, for instance, will often go on a dozen 
times without changing; our player becomes frightened 



THE GAMBLERS PARADISE OF MONTE CARLO 249 

after a third or a fourth unsuccessful turn and draws 
out, pocketing a smart loss. The very next time, per- 
haps, he has the mocking experience of seeing the 
chance turn up that would have won. The pair walk 
away to the trente-et-quarante tables. 

The lowest stake here is a louis, $4, and the chances 
are said to be more favorable to players. By way of 
testing all the possibilities there are in the place our 
traveller throws down a louis and loses it: another, and 
loses it; and then he stops satisfied. 

This is a most typical case of every-day occurrence. 
The pair have paid their initiation fee to the famous 
spot; they have given themselves a good deal to talk 
about to each other, and something to tell about when 
they get home. They might easily have lost the entire 
fund devoted to their travels, and have had to appjeal 
to a consul to find some way of getting them back to 
their own country. I dread more for those who go away 
with small winnings; there is no such thing as a lucky 
gambler; for as the unXwoky gambler always returns, to 
become lucky, the lucky gambler returns to be mpre 
lucky. Play does not ruin everybody any more than 
drink ; it is only the weak minority that it poisons ut- 
terly. I hear a poor defence of Monte Carlo attempted 
sometimes, on the ground that, as play is a rooted pro- 
pensity of human nature, it is better to let people play 
in public than drive them away to secret holes and cor- 
ners. This forgets that not one person in twenty would 
ever set foot in such a place were it not made so very 
easy and enticing for them. In the case in question 
no great harm was done, but I have personally known 
of tragedies, though they did not go to the extent of 
suicide. 



250 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

The more I saw of the place, the worse and worse I 
thought of it. Forthe unstraightlaced majority, Monte 
Carlo is jolly, carnivalesque, and spicily amusing; but 
there is not the least doubt also that Monte Carlo is 
insidious, poisoning, damnable. 



CHAPTER XXI 
A RURAL PASSION-PLAY AT CABBE-ROQUEBRUNE 

Cabbe-Roquebrune is a cluster of medioevai houses, 
presided over by the ruined castle of the Lascaris. It 
makes a spot of human interest in that lovely prospect, 
swimming in light and colors, that the indolent look up 
to from the terraces of Monte Carlo or the promenades 
of Mentone, and the enterprising attain to. 

It has every appearance of having slipped part way 
down the mountain, and the inhabitants say that it was 
marvellously stopped in its course by a sprig of genet^ a 
rough mountain shrub which was plentiful enough in 
the pastures till they all came to be filled up with olive 
and lemon plantations. It is difficult to be in the Ri- 
viera on the 5th of August, but I am sure many of the 
enterprising and amateurs of quaint and artistic effects 
would be glad to have been there on that day to see at 
Roquebrune the celebration of one of the most charac- 
teristic and original French village fetes. I do not 
know why a spot that is very far from aspiring to any 
ambitious altitude should have chosen La Madonna de 
la Neve, the Madonna of the Snow, for its patron saint, 
but such is the case, and on a hot summer day the name 
has a sort of pleasant sherbet effect that soothes the 
imagination. 

The really original feature and central event of this 
fete of several days' duration is a miracle play, a proces- 

251 



252 . A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

sion of the Passion, which has come down from the 
most remote antiquity. It is one of the very few sur- 
vivals apart from Ober-Ammergau — the only one, so 
far as I know — that brings down this mediaeval usage 
into the broad daylight of our own times. Let me say 
at once that it is a far ruder, more primitive affair 
than the polished performance at Ober-Ammergau. It 
has naive, simple, even amusing features, almost like 
the play of Pyramus and Thisbe as given by Shake- 
speare's rustics in the Midsummer Nighf s Dream. I 
found myself, after the first moment, considering not 
at all whether it was religious or irreligious, but only 
studying it as an ancient custom exceptionally pre- 
served. 

There can be no doubt whatever that the village is 
the scene of a land-slide, though it did not come down 
with it. The houses are encrusted in the debris^ often 
indistinguishably; great rock masses occupy, as a specu- 
lator would look at it, many of the most valuable 
building lots. In the little widening of the main street, 
which forms a small plaza, the postmaster has for next- 
door neighbor an immense boulder of conglomerate, a 
lumpish tower of strength, with grasses waving on the 
top. A low parapet wall joins this to the school-house. 
A corner of the dancing tent for the fete was backed 
against the school. Across the way a prosperous bu- 
vette and the establishment of the leading coiffeur were 
hollowed out in the solid rock ; a three-story habitation 
was formed by filling in a deep cleft, and another, partly 
on the side, partly on the back of a round boulder, fol- 
lowed its curve. The rude old gray castle has the 
most enormous of all the boulders for a pedestal, and 
is like a turret on an elephant's back. Climbing the 



A RURAL PASSION-PLAY 253 

Steep little streets, which dive through, under, and 
around and otherwise circumvent the smoothed rocks, 
I saw an occasional female figure, anxiously dressing 
long in advance of the procession, glance out to inquire 
the meaning of my footfall in silent courts or lanes. 
The gay bunting and the booths of itinerant merchants 
gave all this gray ground the touches of color it needed 
to form a picture of the pleasantest tone. The author- 
ities had withdrawn, as they are wont to do on the oc- 
casion of such/e^es, their prohibition against gambling, 
and nearly every diversion offered the public took some 
picturesque form of roulette. Village Hampdens were 
ruining themselves at these tables with the a.ir o( g^^ands 
seigneurs at Monte Carlo, and it seemed as if all the 
money in the place must soon pass into the hands of 
the strolling dealers. 

The crowd became very dense, a gay, orderly crowd, 
with the Prefect and another high dignitary or two from 
Nice among them half-incog. The yoUng girls were 
particularly trim and well dressed in their light summer 
costumes of sim.ple stuff. I was taken in to see the 
properties of the coming procession and introduced to 
the leading personages. There was a great deal of 
pasteboard about the former; the helmets were not 
meant for close inspection; the spears were very de- 
cidedly wood. A few of the older dresses, frayed with 
age, were of rich material. Though I had heard much 
of this /e^e in advance, I now got my first idea what it 
was like. There was to be a living representation, in 
the streets, of a number of the stations of the cross. 
The number has varied at different times with the total 
of performers. This time there were to be six, or, 
strictly speaking, only four. The sacred central figure 



254 ^ HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

would be presented, not in one only, but in four differ- 
ent groups simultaneously; hence four different Christs 
were necessary. These parts were distributed to one 
Jean Baptiste Imbert, for Christ in the Garden, Etienne 
Gonzales, for Christ at the Pillar, Joachim Moro, for 
Christ before Pilate, and Antoine Perna, for Christ on 
Calvary. Though I had heard much to the contrary, 
none of these men had made any change in his personal 
peculiarities, to conform to the tradition of the Sa- 
viour's appearance. They were old and young, some 
very bald, and all wore their moustaches, one having 
them of quite a military sort. This was perhaps but 
the same sort of honest simplicity that kept the earlier 
masters from bothering their heads with learned archae- 
ology and let them paint sacred subjects after the fash- 
ions of their own time. 

The population of Roquebrune, a thousand souls in 
all, consists principally of small cultivators, with a 
sprinkling of employes who go down to work every day 
at Mentone, and others who sweep, light the gas, and take 
care of the garden paths at the Casino of Monte Carlo. 
From this modest constituency all the personages were 
drawn. The principal parts descend in families, and 
considerable honor is attached to them. The father 
names his son or nephew and gives him all the instruc- 
tion necessary; it is not very profound, as I shall show. 
In case of default, or scandals in the life of the incum- 
bent, the church committee names the successor. As 
to the female characters, I was surprised to learn that 
they were reduced to as small a proportion as possible, 
and by no means play the important role they really 
did in the sacred story. They do not inherit, and the 
few that are necessary are chosen from year to year. 



A RURAL PASSION-PLAY 255 

The three Marys were simply three women in black so 
heavily veiled as to be completely hidden from recog- 
nition. There were a few very young school-girl angels ; 
and Veronica was the only female personage frankly 
displayed to view. The celebration was under the 
charge of the cure, but its immediate director was 
Joseph Revelli, a prosperous cultivator. One of my 
informants told me that there had been talk of suppress- 
ing it, as contrary to the law against religious proces- 
sions; but the Republic is lenient in this remote corner 
of the land, and my informant did not believe it would 
be done, because it brings such an influx of visitors 
and such a profitable stir in affairs. 

The hour fixed for the procession was four o'clock. 
It sallied from the church, moved along the principal 
street, into the country, paused a while at a small chapel 
there, and returned over the same route. As I looked 
out of the window where I had taken post, I was first 
sensible, after a confraternity of Children of Mary had 
passed, of a Christ in pink and blue draperies, a young- 
ish man with black hair " banged " low over his forehead. 
A boy angel, marching in advance, offered him a chal- 
ice. He took it, dropped on his knees, and raised his 
eyes reverently to heaven. Judas ran forward from a 
crowd of followers, kissed him, and pointed him out to 
the soldiers. Judas, that there might be no mistaking 
his character, carried a large purse and actively jingled 
the pieces it contained. 

St. Peter interposed with a sword, to prevent the ar- 
rest, but was put aside; a brutal assailant rattled a piece 
of heavy chain about the sacred victim's head; others 
threatened with uplifted hands; a cohort of guards 
pointed their spears forward in a right line; and the 



256 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

group moved on. This action was repeated every fifty 
or one hundred feet as they marched. 

A second group was headed by the centurion on 
horseback. The Christ was now the " man of sorrows ; " 
he was clothed in scarlet raiment and crowned with 
thorns, and he was battered and bloody. x\round him 
were borne a miniature wooden pillar, perhaps three feet 
high, and the implements of his scourging. Ananias and 
Caiaphas walked close behind ; then Herod, shaded 
under an Oriental umbrella; and Pilate continually 
washing his hands with water, which attendants affected 
to pour out for him from an ordinary pitcher into an 
antique-looking bronze basin. 

The third group comprised a Christ who was a de- 
crepit, tottering old man — for naturally, if the part de- 
scends in families, there must be some improbabilities 
on the score of age. He was surrounded by the im- 
plements of the crucifixion, the ladder being in minia- 
ture. A formidable, somewhat apocryphal, character, 
the Mano de Ferro^ or Iron Hand — chosen for his great 
size and ability to assume airs of ferocity — followed 
him close, threatening him with his fist, and, indeed, 
with both fists, to which an exceptional size was given 
by well-padded fencing-gloves. 

Finally, in the fourth group, Christ, bearing his cross, 
fell down from time to time. Veronica, a modest young 
girl, all in blue, with fresh, pretty color, and a wreath 
of roses on her hat, knelt beside him and made a sem- 
blance of taking the imprint of his sacred features — 
which was already painted upon the cloth she carried. 
There was a rattling of large dice and active gesticula- 
tion by four soldiers who followed, and we saw that they 
were casting lots for the poor victim's seamless garment. 



A RURAL PASSION-PLAY 257 

The crucifixion itself was shown only by a group who 
carried a large crucifix ; and lastly a life-sized pieta^ or 
figure of the dead Saviour, was carried on a bier, while 
the Marys, heavily veiled in black, walked beside it. 
The procession was closed in by chanting priests. 
Though the background was everywhere ancient enough, 
the effect was the pleasantest and most in keeping as 
the strange cortege wound among the fields — for the 
site itself was another Mount of Olives. And the wide 
sea view below — if the Mediterranean be blue in win- 
ter, think what an intensity of blue it may attain under 
the shimmering heats of August — how delicious it was! 

At the chapel there was a brief disbanding. I could 
not help remarking how Herod sat on the parapet wall 
and pushed his tinsel crown comfortably to the back of 
his head, how the centurion kept the small boys away 
from his horse, and St. Peter joked familiarly with one 
of the Scribes bearing a great book. The three Marys 
now lifted their veils and discovered pleasing young 
faces. The procession is said to have been founded in 
pursuance of a vow at the time of some devastating 
epidemic. I consulted the ancients of the people to 
learn just when this was. They replied only with that 
silent whistling and waving of the hand, as if they 
would shake all the fingers off, which probably denote 
prodigious antiquity. This was not an accurate way of 
fixing a date, but the educated personages of the local- 
ity were no more satisfactory. The schoolmaster, the 
doctor, the cure were all new in the place, and there was 
nothing in the archives of the church about it. I think 
it had never occurred to them to be interested in such 
matters of exact detail; they were satisfied to know 
that the procession existed, and that it brought in 
17 



258 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

every year so great a number of strangers, to their 
decided pecuniary benefit. 

The line of march was taken up anew. It was even 
in part over an old Roman road, the Aurelian Way, 
repaired for modern uses. The angel presented his 
chalice, Judas rattled his money, the Christ fell upon 
his knees, the pretty Veronica presented her towel. Iron 
Hand threatened with his fist, all in good faith, I am 
sure, and all doing their best to arouse the religious 
fervor of the audience. By dint of repetition and fa- 
tigue the action became mechanical, and reminded you 
of elaborate clocks with performing figures, like the 
famous one at Strasburg. At the end they disap- 
peared into the parish church, and it was not less curi- 
ous than any of the rest to see that congeries of spears, 
helmets, and extraordinary persons, all massed in the 
dusky interior, attending a vesper service. 



CHAPTER XXII 

OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS, THE QUEEN AND THE 
EMPEROR 

The august Queen of England came that year to 
Grasse, for the spring vacation she is accustomed to 
take at the southward. 

The small city of Grasse, back of Cannes, and not 
many miles from us, seems especially adapted to the 
reception of royalties or " principal persons. " Not that 
it had ever received many of great note before; on the 
contrary, it was quite bowed down under the honor that 
fell upon it. But I speak from the point of view of the 
spectator. The town, half-way up the side of a steep 
mountain, has an altitude of somewhat less than 2,000 
feet. It is fastened to its mountain like a peach or pear 
tree to a garden wall, to get the full benefit of the sun. 
The railway station is in the valley. The road climbs 
by numerous zig-zags, so that, on wheels, a good half- 
hour is consumed in the ascent, while on foot, taking 
the short cuts frequented by the natives, it is a matter 
of but a few minutes. Thus you had only to stand by 
the parapet wall and watch the royal cortege approach, 
and then without haste — even though it came at a smart 
trot — climb to a higher level, and meet it anew. Conse- 
quently, I saw the Queen oftener and closer on the first 
afternoon of her arrival than many others could have 
done during the several weeks of her stay. 

259 



26o A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

The population of Grasse, twelve thousand in all, 
spread out along the terraces, some higher, some lower; 
there was no crowding nor discomfort. Here the uni- 
formed school-boys from the lyceums, in a long line, 
there a delegation from the perfumery factories, and 
there the strangers, chiefly English, come up for the 
day from Cannes and Nice. They showed to good ad- 
vantage, the well-dressed English against the back- 
ground of the plain, rustic Grasse people. The pictu- 
resque in costume has disappeared even more completely 
from the Riviera than from the rest of France. The 
pretty white caps of the women, that refresh the eye in 
the north, are not seen here. A maid entering service 
will hardly wear one, but will forego an advantageous 
place instead. 

The queen lodged at the Grand Hotel, the only com- 
fortable one in Grasse, retaining the whole of it, which 
left the town very short of accommodation. The pro- 
prietor with an Indian servant rode in the first carriage, 
considerably in advance of the others, a pudgy, fresh, 
little man, a Swiss, resplendent in white gloves. His 
beaming face expressed the general contentment of 
the inhabitants, who murmured approval. Grasse could 
hardly believe it to be true. Next came the Queen her- 
self. 

Human nature is inclined to be derisive of established 
greatness, a little contemptuous of prodigious reputa- 
tions. 

Having got already much entertainment from the half- 
mediaeval town, its peculiar industry and charming points 
of view, I should not have greatly minded not seeing 
the queen herself. But, suddenly, there she was, close 
by — not a dozen feet away. A peculiar feeling, I know 



OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS 261 

not what, a little electric thrill made up of surprise and 
liking, passed through me. 

"A very nice old lady! a charming old lady!" one 
involuntarily exclaimed. 

She wore mourning. Her silvery hair was smoothed 
in plain bands on her temples, she was short and not 
majestic as the queen of so great a kingdom should be. 
Stout, too, her figure having gone the way of all flesh : at 
seventy-two, I suppose, it is not fair to expect much of a 
figure, even a queen's. She had, moreover, double chins ; 
yet the high aquiline nose, high, without being unfemi- 
nine, gave the face a patrician distinction ; while the calm 
level gaze of the eyes spoke of the fifty-four long years 
of sway during which she had said, without dispute, to 
this man," Go," and he goeth ; and to the other," Come," 
and he cometh. No conspicuous amiability, but a 
nice, grave dignity, intelligence, an expression to in- 
vite confidence ; and no apparent weakening yet by age 
— a face matching the events of her excellent reign. I 
found the same surprised, agreeable impression shared 
by other Americans. 

A squad of mounted gendarmes escorted the royal 
carriage, — the fine men, in cocked hats and laced coats, 
who figure in Punch-and-Judy and give a touch of last 
century color wherever they go. Could anybody be 
supposed not to know the real state of the case, he 
might think these a collection of gallant sovereigns, 
and the quiet ladies in the carriages following them 
only a part in their household. By the queen sat her 
youngest daughter, Beatrice — how time flies! — thirty- 
four already. She was not a beauty but had distinction 
and a ladylike air. It would seem easy enough to have 
a ladylike air when one descends from the very night 



262 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

of time, and the proudest line of sovereigns; but roy- 
alties have not always even that. This princess married 
the Prince of Battenberg, probably for his taking per- 
sonal qualities. They are said to be fascinating men, 
those of his house, the sons of only a small German po- 
tentate, by a morganatic marriage. 

On the box, beside old Stairs, the coachman, sat 
Grant, the veteran Highland gillie, a very Scotch cap 
above his broad, rustic face. In carriages following 
came Sir Henry Ponsonby, governor of the queen's 
household, the lucky prince of Battenberg, then a few 
gentlemen in waiting, some sober-looking elderly maids, 
and a couple more of the Indian servants, in Oriental 
dress, to gape at, w^ho almost drew away the atten- 
tion of the populace from the notables. The sim- 
plicity of the whole thing, the plain modern dress, the 
scanty number, brought the party down very near the 
level of common life. Americans never get over a little 
surprise that Providence has not entered into the con- 
spiracy to keep up artificial distinctions, but had the 
royalties alighted and mingled with the crowd I think it 
would have been difficuit to pick them out from the rest. 

Never before such doings in Grasse! The munici- 
pality had voted money — and it is not in the habit of 
doing it — and masts suspended strings of banners across 
the streets. Two triumphal arches, wound with mimosa 
and laurel, and ensigns, British and French, were set 
up, one at the station at the foot of the climb, the 
other close by the Grand Hotel, the end of it. They 
had tidied the streets and put the roads in excellent con- 
dition. The Old Town has peculiar advantages for 
gathering offensive sights and smells, but it was not 
likely the queen would ever get there; it was too steep, 



OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS 263 

narrow, and crooked for her age and station. Connois- 
seurs like tiie Princess Louise, an artist of talent, might, 
however, find bits for brush and pencil. The houses 
were smartened with lime-wash, in the newer part of 
town ; the lamp-posts bronzed and gilded, and to see 
the thick coat of new green paint on the public benches 
you would never want to sit down on one of them. 
The Queen, leaving the rigors of the North behind her, 
reached the South under almost its best aspect. Mon- 
sieur Henry, the Prefet of the Alpes Maritimes, the 
British Consul and the Military Governor very fine in the 
cocked hats and embroidered coats they don for such 
occasions, greeted her. The principal welcome, as at 
Cannes, was in the form of the presentation of beautiful 
flowers. " The language of flowers " in this case, had a 
very definite meaning. 

The Queen-empress travelled as the " Countess of 
Balmoral," though one could hardly see the use of an 
incognito that concealed nothing. It was Haroun al 
Raschid going about in proper person, quite shorn of 
any opportunity to make discoveries or redress griev- 
ances. 

Her Majesty went by, to the hollow clattering of 
hoofs and the flash of sabres, and I had my little thrill. 
Quintessences are potent, and here, in this one plain 
body, was condensed the highest expression of what 
men most envy — power, riches, lofty station, and long 
descent; here was the principal monarch of the earth 
passing in most quiet form; here, to the American eye, 
the greatest piece of bric-a-brac existing. To the 
Twenty-third Alpine Chasseurs was confided the guard 
of honor. They are a corps specially drilled for the 
defence of the mountains. They are taught to climb 



264 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

with alpenstocks, fight behind every intervening rock, 
convey light batteries and their baggage-mules with 
them into apparently inaccessible places. There is a 
corresponding corps on the Italian side, but in case of 
war the French would have some advantage. Italy 
here lies to the north, and the snow naturally melts as 
miuch earlier on the southern slopes in the spring-time, 
as it falls upon them later in the autumn. 

The Boulevard du Fragonard turns round the pretty 
public garden, where a white bust of the gay painter 
nestles amid palms by a fountain. You recollect the 
Goncourts have devoted a careful study to this painter, 
who was born at Grasse. It bespeaks something tol- 
erant of pleasure in the town to have given its principal 
boulevard the name of one of its sons, who always over- 
stepped the proprieties about as much as he dared. 
His bright and merry designs remained on the hither 
side, sometimes, to be sure, for Fragonard did religious 
pictures also. There is one at the cathedral; and 
I went to see what the designer of " The Happy Acci- 
dents of the Swing " would make of religious art, but 
the curtain was down over it for an indefinite period. 
There are said to be in the shabby little Hotel Malvilan, 
facing the public garden, eight fine Fragonards, painted 
for the hotel of la Belle Dubarry, near Marly. I was 
assured by an enthusiast they were the only things in 
Grasse worth seeing. But if they are the only thing 
worth seeing, they were perhaps the one thing in 
Grasse most difficult to see. The custodian, though 
they are in the guide-book, had his good days and 
his grumpy days, and whether the visitor could succeed 
in making acquaintance of these masterpieces was 
always an obscure problem. 



OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS 265 

The Avenue Thiers merges in the road to Nice. The 
Avenue Thiers is a fine, long terrace, free from houses 
on one side and commanding a noble view of the valley- 
down to Cannes, with the blue sea beyond. The Queen 
could almost hold communication with her fleet, cruis- 
ing in those waters. Following the avenue an eighth 
of a mile outside the town, you come to the Grand 
Hotel, and a few villas, the chief one that of the Baron- 
ess Rothschild. 

The Grand Hotel, hardly so grand as its name might 
imply, is a new, comfortable edifice of cream-colored 
stone, four stories high on one side and three on the 
other, owing to the hill, and capable of containing about 
eighty people. As to the furniture, it was of the average 
hotel kind that one knows without description. The 
Queen had brought her own mahogany bed and pecu- 
liar writing-table for state correspondence, and her bed- 
room had been newly frescoed, sea-green with bamboo- 
pattern border. But as to the rest, it was reassuring to 
ordinary mortals to see that the household of a sovereign 
could put up with such ordinary tables and chairs, and 
well-worn Brussels carpets. The names of the principal 
functionaries were fixed in prominent lettering on their 
doors. Those old soldiers. Sir Henry Ponsonby and 
Major Bigge, had a small sitting-room and bed-room 
apiece such as might be given to any casual commer- 
cial traveller. 

The preparations were in active progress just before 
the Queen's arrival, the opening-day, and perhaps 
they thought she would appreciate better what was done 
for her if she saw some of it going on. I watched an 
artist for the Illustrated London News sketching the tri- 
umphal arch. He was making his sketch faster than 



266 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the arch advanced. Then he went and sketched the 
carriages in the stables. A landau, a victoria, and a 
donkey-phaeton, in plain blue cloth, with the quietest 
of crests on the panels, and a lot of brass-mounted har- 
ness, with bells for the horses, to give pedestrians a fair 
chance to escape being run over. I note the plainness 
without saying I approve of it ; it would be more amus- 
ing to^see glass coaches like Cinderella's. The horses 
were all of dappled gray — the Queen drives with no 
others — ^of no particular breed, but picked up, as I heard 
the head groom say — for even the head groom of a 
queen does not fail to drop his h's — "picked up of 'oss 
dealers just w'erever it 'appins. " 

The stable roofs were disguised as broad terraces, 
which blend with olive orchards climbing the mountain, 
to meet pine groves on its crest. I was politely invited 
to take post on these terraces, for the final view, by a 
pleasant old gentleman, like a figure in a comedy, who 
had sold the ground for the hotel and had more to sell 
— at two francs the square metre — on the hill of the 
Plateau of Napoleon. 

The Queen assisted at a Battle of Flowers they gave 
her, from her post above the hotel entrance-door, and 
was well in view from the benevolent old Frenchman's 
terraces, but after that she was not very much seen 
by the general public at Grasse. People managed to 
meet her, of course, on the long drives she was fond of 
taking, but when at home she maintained a close seclu- 
sion. No doubt this opportunity for quiet had been 
one of her motives in coming. 

Her favorite mode of getting about was the donkey- 
phaeton. The paths of the hotel garden and the larger, 
finer garden of the Baroness Rothschild close by had 



OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS 267 

all been adapted to the wheels of the donkey-phaeton. 
So the Queen was able to jog comfortably up hill and 
down dale, over a considerable space of ground, getting 
plenty of fresh air without ever going outside of her 
private enclosures. The hotel-garden descended gen- 
tle slopes covered with delicious green grass — one of 
the greatest of rarities — dotted with clumps of semi- 
tropical plants, a piece of rock-work, a fringe of 
eucalyptus, and a round bed of pansies of the bluest 
blue, which you might almost have mistaken for a ba- 
sin of water. In the grounds, was a gymnasium. I 
know not whether the royal suite kicked up their heels 
there in plain sight of royalty, if she pleased to look 
down from the sunny south windows of her rooms. 
Rose-bushes were trained in the high wire netting of 
the tennis-court, so as to make a complete flowery trellis. 
Westward you look up to three cypresses on the lofty 
Plateau of Napoleon. Napoleon made a brief halt 
here, in that marvellous adventure of his of the escape 
from Elba and the re-establishment of the Empire. It 
was at the end of his first march, by night, from the 
sea at Golfe Juan. At Grasse he found a printing 
office, and printed the proclamations already prepared : 
"Soldiers! we were not beaten; we were betrayed." 
How stirring, how martial it forever remains! It in- 
dicted Marmont and Augereau, who had surrendered 
to the allies. It had no great concern about sticking to 
the facts, but it was most excellently adapted to its 
purpose. The troops breakfasted, but not till they were 
well out of the town and high above it, to forestall dan- 
ger from enemies who might overwhelm them on the 
pass. This could easily have been done, one would 
say, at a certain loopholed fort, half convent and ruined 



268 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

chapel, directly across the road. It is still a most 
charming point of view, as you go on to the top and to 
the village of Saint Vallier. 

The principal object in the town, from the Hotel, 
was the clump of towers of the cathedral, a small one 
to which Vauban set the heavy hand of the military 
engineer. The town a trifle recalls Toledo — very, very 
gray, with the same little terraces here and there for 
breathing-space. Next in prominence were the many- 
chimneyed distilleries of essences and perfumery, out 
of which the town makes its living. Joanne's guide put 
the number at fifty, but I should not say there were so 
many. All the principal ones occupy old convents, 
which don't look in the least like old convents. It was 
proposed by enthusiasts that the chimneys should be 
forced to consume their own smoke during the Queen's 
visit, but this was not done. There was not enough of 
it to be offensive, and indeed a taste of smoke in the 
air, for the use of a ruler whose capital was London, 
might render the place all the more homelike. 

They are attractive industries, but the actual process 
is not so winning as you might think. No great praise 
for good looks is to be lavished upon la Jolie Parfumeuse 
at Grasse. You go, for instance, into the factory of 
Notre Dame des Fleurs. A heavy, square-built girl is 
puddling violets around a tank of hot fat, with a stick. 
Others of like sort or old women are crushing jonquils 
into cakes of cold lard. Grease in some form is the 
agent for extracting the perfumes, which are then tried 
out of the fat by spirits of wine. Violets and other 
flowers come in daily by the ton for these operations, 
and also a great quantity of fruit, for preserving dry in 
sugar. The busy season begins in May, when roses 



OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS 269 

are most in bloom, and for eight or nine months there 
must be active demand for all the labor in town. The 
men get fifty cents a day, the women twenty-five. The 
gardens of supply are, unfortunately, not so frequent 
at Grasse itself as in the country. You get only a cer- 
tain idea of them in coming up from Cannes, in the ter- 
raced fields planted with low rose-bushes, much like 
vineyards elsewhere. 

The Queen's donkey-phaeton, pulled by an unusually 
large, powerful, bay donkey, had no driver's seat. A 
young Highlander, Clark, led the animal by the head, 
while a trusty older one held by a wooden bar behind, 
to push, if need be, or lend a hand in any other way 
required. The Queen went out thus every morning. 
Princess Beatrice walking familiarly beside her. In the 
afternoon she took long drives behind her grays, with 
ladies-in-waiting; a programme not greatly differing 
from that at Balmoral. 

She was not so far separated from her interests of 
state. Lord Salisbury, her Prime Minister, was at 
Beaulieu, where the villa he was building — an ugly one 
— had long been the talk of the country. The Duke of 
Rutland, Minister in Attendance, was established in the 
cheap, little, hastily finished Villa Scagliotti, just below 
the hotel-grounds. The Duke of Cambridge, General- 
issimo of the Armies, used to come up often from Cannes. 

There was one woman in Grasse almost more inter- 
esting than the Queen herself, the Baroness Alice de 
Rothschild, the power behind the throne, the author 
of the greatness that had so surprisingly descended 
upon the place. She was English, in spite of her name, 
an unmarried, somewhat elderly lady, of fine presence, 
strongly individual character, good taste, energetic 



270 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

habits, and, by what was said of her in the place, a char- 
itable disposition, which makes her presence there a 
decided boon. She spoke of her abode not as a villa 
at all but a cottage. It was a long, two or three-story 
house, irregular-roofed, tinted warm rose-color, close 
on the street, but with its principal charm the sunny 
garden side above a delightful prospect of valley. 
Though the house is not, in fact, large, it gets a certain 
fine air of spaciousness by an excellent arrangement of 
chambers, which denotes the habit of familiarity with 
grandeur. The Princess Louise stayed with her while 
her august mother was at the Grand Hotel. It appeared 
that this Grand Hotel was owned by a stock company of 
the citizens, and had not till now been especially profit- 
able. Now that Grasse had become a " resort " its 
fortune was made. Instead of charging the Queen 
3,500 francs a day for lodging, as they were said to do, 
they might well have afforded to take her free, as a pure 
advertisement. Plenty of enterprising persons would 
be glad to carry royalty anywhere without expense, if 
royalty were open to that sort of propositions. 

The history of the whole affair was said to be this: 
The Baroness Rothschild, suffering from a touch of rheu- 
matic fever, tried Grasse at a venture. It was such a 
success that she got the Princess Louise, the Queen's 
second daughter, there, and the Princess, recommend- 
ed it to the Queen. There can be a decided touch 
of mountain sharpness about it, as I have experienced,, 
but its air is better for certain constitutions than the too 
saline air along the coast. It is a sort of southern Bal- 
moral, and it is peaceful and quiet. The local journals 
spoke of the Baroness as " our benefactor, our dear 
chatelaine," though her modesty disclaimed any merit. 



OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS 27 1 

As the principal resident, she might be figured to take 
the place of those Counts of Grasse, now locally ex- 
tinct, identified with our own War of Independence. 
The Count de Grasse, " Lieutenant-General of the 
King's naval armies," who figured at Newport and in 
the capture of Yorktown, establishes a bond between 
America and the remote nook in the hills of Provence. 
If the Baroness de Rothschild would have no part 
in the credit of it, she used her executive talent to 
advantage in the reception of the illustrious guests. 
All had her personal supervision. Yonder she goes — 
a brisk figure, in a gray skirt, buff gauntlets, and 
straw hat with white gauze about it, directing a dozen 
people at once and putting the finishing touches to the 
garden. Not Jthat the garden needed finishing touches 
— a garden of rare plants upon an expanse of green 
grass, without any garish magnificence. Regulated by 
quiet taste, it won instead of overpowering. An ex- 
tensive grotto under the villa was fitted up with matting, 
carpets, easy-chairs, a writing-table and pots of roses, 
for the Queen. 

There she reposed herself if the sun chanced to be 
too hot, those early spring days, or there she jogged 
about the paths in her pony chair. The Princess Louise 
sketched. General Ponsonby, with his fine, gray, point- 
ed beard, and the other high functionaries and exalted 
visitors unbent in familiar conversation. A charming, 
family sort of life went on ; they could so nearly make 
us forget they were Royalties, that perhaps they some- 
times forgot it themselves. 

There was at Cannes, at the same time, the Emperor 
gf Brazil, overthrown by the bloodless revolution and 



272 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

driven into exile. It was said to be the reactionary 
tendencies of his daughter, the Countess d'Eu, next 
successor to the throne, that had caused the revolution. 
She was with him now, she and her husband and three 
pretty boys, and all of them sometimes drove to visit 
the Queen of England at Grasse. 

I had the honor and pleasure of being presented, in 
familiar audience, to the Emperor and talking with him 
at length about Reciprocity, just at the moment a 
much-mooted policy as between our country and Brazil, 
and upon many other less weighty topics. 

The Emperor, like the Queen, lived for the time- 
being in an hotel, with the difference that he had not 
the whole of it but only a floor. It is a manner of life 
not infrequent among royalties and ex-royalties, on the 
Riviera, and these great personages are also considered 
to feel disposed to unbend much more easily there than 
when at home. This hapless family you remember 
had been embarked on a steamer in their port of 
Rio Janeiro, and sent away to Europe. The Empress 
Theresa died soon after their arrival at Lisbon. To 
whatever disease it may have been ascribed, certainly 
the shame and grief of the dethronement, the sting of 
ingratitude, the heart-break of exile had much to do 
with it, as they had also with the demise of the ex- 
cellent and amiable Dom Pedro, a little later. I was 
the recipient of some of his latest and perhaps most 
frankly expressed opinions, and this circumstance has 
ever since heightened the interest of the meeting and 
perhaps gives it a certain retrospective value. 

The hedges at Cannes, that early March day, were 
powdered white, by the dust of the roads, as if they 
were trying to rival the snow on the hedges in the north 



OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS 273 

country behind our friendly screen of mountains, where 
all the inclemencies of winter were still raging. But it 
goes without saying that there w^ere charming palms 
and flowers and oranges on the steep incline of the 
Hotel Beau Sejour. From the top of the incline you 
looked over a quiet part of dull, modern Cannes and off 
to those volcanic-seeming mountains, so prominent in all 
the landscape, the Esterels. 

I found myself received by Count Aljessur, chamber- 
lain of the imperial household, a small, elderly very 
pleasant and agreeable man, with something Arab in his 
name and a ribbon in his buttonhole. There were no 
retainers to usher you in, no display of the Emperor's 
green and gold — no ostentation at all. Yet — simple as 
the Emperor's personal tastes always were — the court 
of Brazil once followed the minute ceremonial of the 
proud house of Braganza, and was not less splendid 
than the stateliest in Europe. We went first to a small, 
plain billiard-room, where I judged the Emperor had 
been playing, for we saw him retiring slowly along the 
hall. 

Immediately after, I was ushered into his presence, 
in a private parlor without characteristic traits or per- 
sonal belongings. It would have been extremely diffi- 
cult to conceive of the tall, slightly bent old man, with 
snowy hair and beard, who came forward to meet me, 
as wearing a crown and robes of office. There was no 
ceremonial reception; he gave me his hand in a very 
friendly way, sat down upon a sofa, and made me sit 
near him. 

He was then sixty-six years of age. His once strong 
constitution was undermined by illness and disappoint- 
ment. His countenance was extremely wrinkled, but 
18 



274 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

his blue eyes still looked out brightly from under shaggy 
brows; his talk was quick and decided, and he retained 
much interest in all matters of the intelligence. His 
English was very good, but he had more facility in 
French, and preferred that language. 

"Well, how are your American poets?" he began 
briskly. " I once knew your Longfellow, Bryant, 
Lowell, and that man from California — Bret Harte, and 
that other one — the Quaker — Whittier. " 

He declared bluntly that he did not believe in the 
proposed reciprocity, and, if he had still been at the 
head of affairs, he would not have permitted it. It ap- 
peared to be a better thing for the United States than 
for his own people. He had a very sincere regard for 
the United States apart from their narrow protective 
policy — as he looked at it. He himself was a protec- 
tionist to a certain extent, but only to the extent of 
protecting the industries indigenous to a country. 

He turned to books again, and made courteous in- 
quiry as to what sort of literary work I myself did. I 
replied as modestly as possibly that I had attempted the 
rather romantic novel with realistic characters. 

"Oh, I don't hke that at all, the realistic novel; I'm 
dead against that," he interrupted, with a gesture of 
humorous protest that at once drew confidence. 

He mentioned some of the Brazilian writers and wrote, 
down a list for me with his own hand. "Guarany," 
"Guacho," " Pata de Gazella," and others, by Joze de 
Alencar, once a cabinet minister of his empire, were 
among the number. "Those are very good," he 
said. " I advise you to get them and to make them 
known." 

De Alencar, I judge, treats chiefly of Indian life and 



OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS 275 

customs in an idealizing way, like a sort of Fenimore 
Cooper of Brazil. 

The current events of the Revolution and the vital 
issues in Brazil I approached with diffidence, dreading 
to arouse painful memories that might render the sub- 
ject almost a forbidden ground. But there proved to 
have been no need at all for misgiving. The illustrious 
exile discoursed on what had taken place freely, dis- 
passionately, without trace of resentment in his tone. 
He talked of the new institutions like a friendly student 
of them, only removed by distance from sufficiently 
accurate information. He said he had studied the new 
constitution article by article. The abolition of slav- 
ery, thus completing the gradual emancipation he had 
inaugurated twenty years ago, he had welcomed most 
gladly. 

" I was lying ill at Milan at the time," said he, " almost 
at death's door. That news was the starting-point of 
my recovery, and I believe it cured me." 

Owing to absence of any such prejudice against them 
as prevails in the United States he said the blacks 
would never be a menace to the social order in Brazil. 
In course of time they would become merged in the 
general population. Nor did he fear any permanent 
disastrous consequences from the numerous current pro- 
jects of wild-cat speculation. The natural resources 
of the country he said were too great and were as yet 
almost untouched. When I mentioned the charges of 
corruption and selfish ambition brought against his 
successor. President da Fonseca, he came out in mag- 
nanimous defence of the principal agent in his over- 
throw — somewhat, however, at the expenseof da Fonse- 
ca's character for general intelligence. He declared 



276 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the new President to be an honest man, against whom 
he should find it exceedingly difficult to believe any 
charges of mercenary corruption ; and as to his seizing 
the power and making himself dictator, he did not think 
him capable of so much contrivance. He was a mere 
military man, he said, a brave sabreur, who had done 
some good service in the war with Paraguay, but he 
had no large ideas or far-reaching designs either for 
good or bad. 

Dom Pedro reserved another surprise for me in say- 
ing that he had always been a republican at heart. " I 
myself would have given the people a republic," he de- 
clared, " as soon as I felt that they were ready for it. 
You must remember that with us the needed prepara- 
tion was slow, the problem an unusually difficult one. 
We had to count not with the steadiness and trained 
experience of Anglo-Saxons, but with the excitable im- 
agination and imperfect development of our very mixed 
population." 

The exiled monarch's talk came easily; it needed no 
labored art to draw it out. His very fulness of expres- 
sion made the absence from it of any words of bitter- 
ness the more remarkable. In him, even an exagger- 
ated resentment toward his enemies might have seemed, 
at the moment, natural and excusable, but there was 
none whatever. This large, tolerant spirit and con- 
tinued interest in the welfare of his realm, at the ex- 
pense of all personal considerations, seemed, under the 
circumstances, with his age and infirmities, both noble 
and touching. 

If there is one thing better than the best of republics, 
it is a wise and unselfish monarch. Could that kind alone 
be counted upon — which unfortunately they cannot, 



OUR ELIGIBLE NEIGHBORS 277 

and there's the rub — despotism ought to flourish un- 
troubled forever. I endeavored to find suitable phrase 
to say to my kindly host that his beneficent reign would 
yet be known in Brazil as an age of gold, which would 
be looked back to with gratitude and regret. The re- 
public had to come, no doubt: it was in the air perhaps 
and could not be delayed; but even a republican may 
properly feel that way I fancy, about an authority which 
governed temperately, with conscience and in favor of 
every worthy object. 

He deprecated this, but conceded : " I have done what 
I could. I can truthfully say that I aimed to persuade 
rather than command and that I never arbitrarily forced 
my will upon the country. Do you know," he added 
confidentially, " that when I first came to the throne, as a 
mere boy, I even gave way to my advisers in something 
where I felt I was right ? I was diffident about my age 
and did this purposely, to show my people that I was 
not going to be unreasonable and headstrong." 

It was very sweet to hear from the fine old man, very 
pleasant to have such words from the lips of such a 
model ruler and august exile. 

" For one thing I was brought up simply, much like 
any ordinary boy," he continued, "and that no doubt 
had a good effect upon me. At school, for instance, we 
had no scions of a haughty feudal aristocracy about us. 
In Brazil titles of nobility were only a form of decora- 
tion, a brief reward of merit, as it were. They did not 
descend in families. The child of a count or baron 
might come to be a humble laborer perhaps, like the 
man you see there on the lawn." 

We looked out of the window, where the gardener was 
spading around a bush, and two spare elderly English 



278 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE ^ 

girls, in the little sailor-hats they affected like a uni- 
form, were sallying down to sketch the old part of 
Cannes. It has outlived all its usefulness other than to 
be sketched. 

"The Riviera is good for me, as an invalid," went 
on the sociable Emperor, "but I rust out here; it is too 
dull. I have too much of the American temperament 
about me, 'go-head! ' 'go-head! ' " smiling humorously. 
" I used to quote much your Longfellow's motto, 'Ex- 
celsior! ' and I can't get over it." 



CHAPTER XXIII 
HOW IT WAS IN THE ISLAND OF CORSICA 

What pleasure, indeed, when the shadow cast by our 
tall cliff began to recede again. Spring came in a cool, 
deliberate way. The lovely almond blossoms, pink and 
white, never hurried forward by undue heat, remain 
upon the trees months at a time. It is not warm enough 
to put on summer clothing till near the end of May. 

Still the shadow of the cliff had been upon us, and we 
had said in the winter-time that we would change our 
residence on account of it. But if we were to change 
our residence at all, why not pursue our peculiar plan 
of travel and move on into still another country? So 
we reasoned and decided. We balanced between Eng- 
land and Italy. 

But first there was an excursion nearer home, an en- 
ticement either to be succumbed to or to be cleared off 
the account. The island of Corsica had long been al- 
luring us across the water. So near it as we were, it 
would have been impossible to neglect the cradle of 
the Napoleonic legend. It is said that you can even see 
Corsica from Nice. I have seen people who say they 
have seen it, and I am inclined to believe them, but we 
ourselves never could succeed in doing so, though we 
got up early in the morning, which is said to be the 
favorite time for the high, snowy peak of Monte d'Oro 
to show itself. People go more or less to Ajaccio as a 

279 



28o A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

winter-resort; and one thing was certain, that the isl- 
and, if not desirable as a home, must prove interesting 
in other ways. 

So I watched a long time for a favorable opportunity 
to cross. But the small steamer sailed only twice a 
week, and on those two sailing days the weather was 
always possessed to blow great guns. Once, in disgust, 
I went on by rail to Piombino on the Italian coast, which 
is separated by but a short distance from the island of 
Elba. I now proposed to combine with it a visit to 
Elba, Napoleon's other island resting-place, before the 
Hundred Days and the disaster of Waterloo, which landed 
him at the third of his islands, St. Helena. I trusted 
somewhat blindly to find means of crossing from Elba 
to Corsica. But that day at Piombino there was such 
a gale as almost tore up the large trees by the roots; 
the rain came down in deluges; there was no boat across 
the strait in such weather and no knowing to what in- 
definite period it might be postponed. Again the at- 
tempt was delayed and merged in another expedition. 

I envied the yachting people less than ever; and in- 
deed many of them simply lay their craft up in port 
all winter long and spend their time comfortably at the 
hotels. I now understood, too, why few people go to 
Corsica. Out of all the hundreds of thousands that 
come to the Riviera it is a rarity when you hear of some 
one who does it. It is not so much dread of the fancied 
dangers and inconveniences of the country, which still 
weighs for something, as it is dread of the capricious 
Mediterranean. The poetic blue Mediterranean can be 
dismally cold and dismal in the winter time and wofully 
blustering and trying to the passenger on a steamer of 
small tonnage. The line that carried the Corsican mail 



HOW IT WAS IN THE ISLAND OF CORSICA 281 

had lately gone into bankruptcy. There was much 
talk of this on the steamer on which I sailed. It was 
owned by Morelli, a senator representing Corsica, and 
the rigors of the French bankruptcy law are such that 
he was to lose all political rights and be expelled from 
the senate. The French bankrupt cannot vote, much 
less hold any office. 

For I did find a fairly promising opportunity at last 
and embraced it. The Bel Ami, the little pleasure 
sloop of Guy de Maupassant, was lying in the port of 
Nice, as we sailed out. 

^^Tiens.f' I said, "it was one of his reprehensible 
books that first made Corsica really existent for me, in 
the modern way." 

It was done, I believe, by some descriptive passage 
in *' Une Vie.'' 

You sail either for Ajaccio, near the southern end of 
the island, or forBastiaor LTle Rousse, near the north- 
ern end. We steamed out at four p.m. and arrived at 
Bastia the next morning. 

You are scarcely expected to admire Bastia. It is 
not a winter colony, a resort for strangers, like Ajaccio. 
Still, backed up by its high mountains, the view of the 
town and of the landscapes about is very pleasing. 
You come to think more of it than at first after you 
have seen Ajaccio. Both towns are about the same 
size, having, say, twenty thousand inhabitants. One of 
the strange things you note is the way the houses run 
up six, eight, and even ten stories high. This is 
stranger yet when you see it in the villages, all over 
Corsica. It is not a prepossessing novelty ; it gives a 
tenement-house and factory-town look and is very con- 
ducive to squalor. It is, no doubt, a heritage of the 



252 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Genoese domination ; the Corsicans threw off the yoke, 
but remain bound to this day by the fashions of their 
former rulers. Inquiring as to the use of these sky- 
scraping buildings, the reply was simply, " It is the 
custom. Building stone is very cheap here, you know; 
it costs almost nothing." 

I made my first excursion into the country to Cardo, 
the little village where Colomba and Ors' Anton took 
final leave of the friendly bandits and their comic dog 
"Brusco," and tried to induce them to abandon the 
country and lead an honest life. For of course Meri- 
mee's beautiful story," Colomba" is among the influences 
that draw one to Corsica. I am not sure but one of 
my leading motives was to have, like that charming 
model, Lydia Nevil of St. James Place, London, the 
pleasure of dating my letters from Ajaccio. 

Cardo is high on the hills, very like, say, such a typi- 
cal Riviera village as Falicon, above Nice. A few 
houses in front are neatly lime-washed, as if expressly 
for effect from below, while all the rest are brown, 
gray, or black with age, mere stone-heaps, as rude as 
the habitations of the early cliff-dwellers. 

It was hardly less deserted and silent than the famous 
maquis^ the brushwood thickets, a part of which I tra- 
versed in mounting by the short cut. It looks down 
upon the vacant port of Bastia, but not upon the thick 
of the town, which clusters around one of those warm- 
colored old Vauban citadels that ornament most of 
the Mediterranean ports. The slopes were principally 
grown with almond and olive trees and patches of grain. 
Country houses or cottages, as everywhere in the island, 
are few. The Corsicans are famous office-holders; at 
Nice, for instance, they abound in the Custom House, 



HOW IT WAS IN THE ISLAND OF CORSICA 283 

the railway, and among the prison guards. There is 
something in the Corsican's character which leads him to 
desire to ''boss" his fellow-men, if only as a concierge. 
These functionaries in course of time secure pensions 
and return to the island to live upon them, but even 
they do not aspire to a house and garden: some curious 
instinct of sociability makes them herd with the rest in 
the unpleasant tenement-houses. 

In the vacant port, I found that my cherished plan 
of crossing from Bastia to Elba direct was impossible. 
I knew that there were no steamers. But there had used 
to be some boats freighting iron ore across from Porto 
Ferrajo to be smelted here. As the distance is but 
short, these, by way of adventure, might have served 
for once. I looked up the smelting-works, and found 
that they had ceased to be operated. 

One afternoon it rained furiously ; veritable floods of 
water disputed the right of way in the streets with the 
passengers. I took refuge in self-defence in the small 
city library and there employed my leisure in hunting 
up the narrative of our ingenuous old friend, James 
Boswell, his journey in the island of Corsica in the year 
1765. There were several editions of the work, both 
French and English. It had but a single defect; it 
was decidedly too short. Chronic seeker after noto- 
riety and the acquaintance of great men as he was, 
Boswell chose Corsica partly because it was a field 
then scarce ever visited and partly to hunt up the pa- 
triot hero, Paoli, in the midst of his wars. He brought 
out a letter to Paoli from so distinguished a source as 
Jean Jacques Rousseau. 

Later, I followed, in several respects the same course 
as the young Boswell. I was less comfortable, when 



284 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

I had to take the heavy lumbering diligence^ for re- 
caUing that he had made a considerable part of the 
journey on foot. He tells us that he was light-hearted 
and gay, that he knocked down chestnuts from the 
trees as he went along, drank from the clear running 
brooks, and tried to realize anew the simple life of prime- 
val men. At the Franciscan convent of Corte — it is 
now replaced by a brand new one — Paoli had an apart- 
ment. Boswell jokingly called the well-to-do friars 
there to their faces, ''^ Nihil habenteset omnia possidentes.'' 
We do not care to repress a smile when we find him 
saying later, " I quoted to Paoli, on this occasion, some 
of the remarks of my sagacious friend, Samuel John- 
son." Quoting Samuel Johnson to an insurgent chief 
in the wilds of Corsica, in the year 1765 — that seems 
about as far as incongruity can go. But, later yet, he 
ingratiated himself with all the camp as well, put on 
the native dress and sang those rude patriots the sterling 
old English ballad, "Hearts of Oak." 

There is a section of narrow-gauge railway built out 
of Bastia, and another out of Ajaccio. They had not 
especially got into the guide-books as yet. On the 
long gap from Corte southward, necessary to complete 
the through line, work was actively progressing. Then 
there are two important branch lines, one down the flat, 
malarious eastern coast, and one to Calvi, a prodigious 
old fortress on a rock in a fertile country, beaten upon 
almost continually by violent winds. The eastern plain 
is all being well sown with eucalyptus and with vines 
and fruit-trees and planted to profitable crops. We 
made a sharp bend to the west, up the small valley 
of the Golo. You have an excellent view of the two 
decisive battle-fields of Borgo and Ponte Novo — but 



HOW IT WAS IN THE ISLAND OF CORSICA 285 

twelve miles apart — where Corsican independence, as 
against the French, was first brilliantly successful, and 
then completely wiped out. It is hard to see how fevers 
can follow up all the turns of such a fine, fresh, dash- 
ing torrent as the Golo, as they are said to do, but the 
evidence is scarce open to dispute. " If it can be so 
here," one asks, "then why not in all other mountain 
districts as well ?" 

I got off at the village of Ponte Leccia, to make a pil- 
grimage to Paoli's birth-place of Morosaglia; and so 
on over the high pass of the Col de Prato, to the springs 
of Orezza. There are Corsicans who put Paoli almost 
above Napoleon. It is extraordinary what an interest 
he excited in his time, when you consider the small scale 
of his operations. Rousseau, Alfieri, Frederick the 
Great, and Joseph of Austria were all his friends and 
admirers, not for political reasons, as Pitt might have 
been, who aided him against the French, but sincerely. 
He had much to do with forming the character of young 
Napoleon, nor would it be difficult, perhaps, to find the 
influence of this early champion of independence even 
in our own Washington. This district was the chosen 
fastness of Corsican insurrection. Its lonesome con- 
vents, hidden in the bosom of the chestnut forests, shel- 
tered Paoli and his council of government. The con- 
vent at Morosaglia was built by rule of thumb ; it is as 
rude and massive as if dug out of a rock, its only orna- 
ment a baroque belfry, typical of its class. You may 
recall that in 1889 some little stir was made over bring- 
ing back the remains of Paoli from London. He 
died there in 1807, and had a tablet in Westminster 
Abbey. I had a letter to Canon Saliceti, who was the 
chief manager of this important affair. He is an amia- 



286 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

ble enthusiast on his subject, and a descendant of that 
Saliceti, representative of the people, who arrested 
Napoleon at Nice, on the eve of his first campaign in 
Italy. The committee were flatteringly received by the 
notabilities of England and dined, among others, by the 
ex-Empress Eugenie; they took the body with pomp 
through the streets of London, and afterward made a 
triumphal procession with it through the island. 

The monument is not a statue, but the ancestral house 
in which Paoli was born. It had pretty much fallen to 
decay. It belonged to a Corsican of high position, 
Franceschini Pietri, the chamberlain of the Empress 
Eugenie, and he presented it for the purpose. It is 
very plain, and, in the restoration, has probably, like 
Napoleon's house at Ajaccio, been made even better 
than it was in the time of its owner. He is buried in 
the chapel. Beside him is a bust, which, like his fine 
bronze statue at Corte and other portraits, is a pleasant 
surprise. I was rather prepared for a mountain warrior 
in goat-skins; on the contrary, here is a gentleman in 
court ruffles and queue, with a touch of genial humor 
on his handsome face; you think at the same time of 
Washington and Garrick. I looked into a poor school at 
Morosaglia, and, later, into a college at Corte, supported 
in part by small funds he left them, but both without 
further interest than that. 

You go down at a hand-gallop, on the other side of 
the pass, into the Castagniccia, the chestnut country 
par excelleiice. I took pains to taste some of the flour 
made from the chestnuts, the bread of the poorer people, 
and found it slightly sweet and very good. The vil- 
lages peep through the tender, sunny green of the al- 
most unbroken chestnut foliage, and delicate ferns car- 



HOW IT WAS IN THE ISLAND OF CORSICA 287 

pet all the ground. I dined in company with the Mayor 
at Piedecroce, and after dinner we went out to look 
down upon the signal fires which the villagers lit up 
one after the other in honor of the fete of St. Pierre. 
The mayor said that as many as two thousand people, 
came to drink the water of Orezza in July and August. 
It is a very agreeable, sparkling water. There is an 
extensive bottling establishment in the bottom of the 
valley. People don't go down there except to drink, 
but stay at one of the three villages high above. The 
Baths of Lucca are slightly recalled, but the accommo- 
dations are much more primitive and not greatly cheaper 
than at Lucca. 

A Corsican officer at Nice, who gave me a letter, 
wanted to wager that I would find nowhere in the world 
a slovenlier city than Corte. I had thought this perhaps 
was merely his own lack of experience in travel; but he 
was right. The old capital of Corte is a picturesque 
crag reeking with filth, which trickles down even into 
the modern portion, in which some fair improve- 
ments have been made. The diligence ride to Vizza- 
vona, to resume the train, is a long five hours' pull, by 
roads, steep but always good. The people in the vil- 
lages are small and spare, the women about as often 
blondish as brunette. The costume cannot be called 
picturesque; the men wear, almost like a uniform, poor 
suits of brown corduroy and nondescript cloth caps. 
You would often confound them with grimy English 
factory hands. Their corduroy suits are afterward cut 
down and, in baggy fashion, clothe the children too. 

We pass exactly alongside the highest mountains, 
snow-capped and very Swiss, where Russian Grand-duke 
George had lately been hunting the wild boar and the 



255 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

moufflon. On the seat beside me sat a little schoolmis- 
tress, who told me a late good bandit story, experienced 
in her own school-room. Informants on this subject 
generally begin by declaring that it is all stuff and non- 
sense, ^' des fumisteries.,'' in fact, and end by quite natu- 
rally relating things that show it to be of frequent oc- 
currence. The vendetta and popular leniency toward 
assassination are undoubtedly about as common as ever. 
But it must be borne in mind that the bandit in Corsica 
is one who is under the ban of the law, and not neces- 
sarily, if at all, a robber. I was assured by many that 
you could go safely from one end of Corsica to the 
other, at any hour of the day or night, and I am much 
inclined to believe it. The bandit, you are comfortably 
assured, should you fall in with him, would befriend 
rather than injure you, unless you should chance to tell 
the gendarmes of him. 

The famous Bellacoscia outlaws were still at Boco- 
gnano, as they have been for forty years, in spite of a 
new determined attempt of the Prefet to break them up. 
They had a hamlet, flocks, herds, and crops of their 
own. The /^;r/^/ had sold off their cattle. AtAjaccio, 
through fear or sympathy, nobody would buy them, and 
they were sent to Marseilles. An acquaintance of theirs 
at Bocognano told me that those men were good to the 
needy. A poor man could go to them at almost any 
time and get fifty or sixty francs, or an order on a mer- 
chant in Ajaccio for a sack of flour, to be repaid. I 
don't know whether these orders are honored on the 
principle of Castriconi, in "Colomba," who wrote cer- 
tain requests to people — oh, quite without threats; that 
was not his style — or whether they are a legitimate 
commercial transaction. One of my drivers, by the 



HOW IT WAS IN THE ISLAND OF CORSICA 289 

way, claimed to have once driven " Colomba " — the old 
lady, of Sartene, who passed for the original of that 
character — in his own stage. He says she was a little old 
woman, so short that her feet would not touch the floor, 
so she sat down comfortably upon it; she was illiterate 
but very intelligent, and had made several journeys 
to Paris in the course of carrying out her schemes of 
vengeance. 

The pretty valley going down to Ajaccio seemed tame 
after the Castagniccia. It is cultivated only in spots; 
the original maqtiis covers most of it. One of the local 
journals of Ajaccio was complaining indignantly at the 
ex-Empress Eugenie because she had just bought an 
estate at Cap Martin, near Monte Carlo, instead of on 
the Casone there. The Casone is an area, out at the 
end of the suburban street, the Cours Grandval, where 
hotels and boulevards have been slightly begun by large 
companies and abandoned. "Yes, those Bonapartes," 
said the journal in question, " though they were born at 
Ajaccio, when they were in power they did nothing for 
us, and now they still squander their millions elsewhere." 

To make this all the more interesting, it should be 
mentioned that the Casone was presented to the town, 
by Napoleon's uncle. Cardinal Fesch. The grotto of 
Napoleon's boyhood is out there. It consists of some 
large smooth boulders, disgustingly daubed over with 
names, many in red and blue paint, in a way I have 
never seen approached in iconoclastic America. There 
is not the slightest attempt made to protect it. 

Ajaccio is not embowered in oranges and roses like 

the Riviera towns, though, on the other hand, its 

oranges are of much better quality. It is very little 

embellished as yet; the strangers who come to pass the 

19 



290 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

winter have not made much impression. The bay, the 
sea, are charming, and so is the Rue du Marche with 
the marble statue of the First Consul in a ring of palm 
trees in the centre; but elsewhere there is much that 
is unkempt. The climate is capable of producing every- 
thing, but, as it is, or used to be, in some parts of 
Southern California, it has not yet done so. All this 
time the temperature was delightful; it was summer, 
but it was not hot ; as you walked the wide, dirty prom- 
enade of the Place Diamant, under the somewhat scrubby 
sycamore trees, the sun was warm, but the breeze, com- 
ing in from the sea in front, was exactly what you would 
like it to be. 

I was at Napoleon's house about the anniversary of 
the battle of Waterloo, The lowest of the three stories 
is the show apartment, with very dilapidated furniture; 
the upper two had been occupied by the Princess Mari- 
anne, an obscure relative by marriage, who had lately 
died there. As her effects were being sold off, I was 
able to secure a small souvenir of the famous home- 
stead, which would not have been so easy on ordinary 
occasions. The house is still very plain, though it was 
improved both by Joseph and by Napoleon, after his re- 
turn from Egypt. It is a part of a block, a high mass 
of stone and mortar, in a dingy side-street, with no 
garden, no privacy, no elbow-room. It could never 
have been possible to keep away from intrusive 
neighbors, any more than it was in the bullet-riddled 
Gaffori house at Corte, that other residence of Charles 
Bonaparte. When all the Bonaparte boys and girls 
were huddled in here, in their time, it must have been 
pretty close quarters. 

The Bonaparte tradition does not gain sentimentally 



HOW IT WAS IN THE ISLAND OF CORSICA 29I 

here among its earliest memorials. Even the monuments 
built with everything in their favor are lacking in some- 
thing. The principal one is by Viollet-le-Duc, on the 
edge of the Place Diamant, by the sea, and represents 
the bronze Emperor on horseback, a handsomer sort of 
Marcus Aurelius, with his four brothers, four kings, 
marching away at the corners. Their line of direction 
is said to be straight for St. Helena, and all their backs 
are turned upon the Place. In spite of Viollet-le- 
Duc, it seems amateurishly classical, thin, and unreal. 
But after awhile there begins to be something fantasti- 
cally striking about all those bronze brothers riding and 
striding away toward St. Helena, paying no heed to any 
sublunary things and ignorant of all that lies between. 
You almost feel as if they were walking in their sleep 
and ought to be waked up. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

A NEW PILGRIMAGE TO CANTERBURY, AND TO LONDON, 
WINDSOR, AND OXFORD 

Corsica in turn was crossed off the list. Corsica 
would not do. What next ? Should it be Italy or Eng- 
land ? But Italy would keep, there was no danger that 
its turn would not come. The presence of some friends 
in England at the time, together with various half-sen- 
timental, half-business, considerations we indulged in 
as to the advantage of acquainting ourselves early in the 
game with the central home of our language and race, 
inclined the balance to England, at least to the extent of 
a journey of exploration. 

We set out in the latter part of April. The infant 
prodigy was left in the efficient charge of the kindly 
Commandant's family, who agreed to send us daily 
bulletins about his health. These bulletins, of course, 
sometimes purported to be written by the dear little 
chap in person. They arrested our attention in our dis- 
tant journeyings, and tended to abridge them. All other 
families no doubt have had the same experience, but as 
it was all in French and so very foreign in every way, it 
seemed to be endowed with an especial quaintness and 
charm. To us, Paris, the great capital, often so gay 
to others, was grimly natural. It took no more pains 
this time than before to throw any pleasant illusion 
about us, but was again dark and rainy to the top of 

292 



A NEW PILGRIMAGE 293 

its bent. We looked out a trifle at the Latin Quarter 
through the closed windows of a cab, then gave up sight- 
seeing. The weather was everywhere unpromising. 

S remained behind for a visit, and I, for the greater 

expedition in the quest, crossed the Channel alone. 

Canterbury, Oxford, Windsor, that is to say, a ca- 
thedral town, a university town, and the most taking 
of the London suburbs, at the same time a court town, 
such was my programme, by way of testing the typical 
English forms of attraction. 

Canterbury, twenty-two thousand people. The rooks 
were cawing in the cathedral close, as they should be 
in all well-regulated cathedral closes. It is understood 
that I do not aim to compete in description with the 
hand-books of many sorts. There were tourists strolling 
in the interior, but I had nothing in common with them. 
It was singular but my quest gave me a sort of per- 
manence, even though it should end in nothing. Some 
ecclesiastics, servants of the noble gray temple, won- 
dered, no doubt, why I stared so hard at the brass 
door-plates and neat doorways of their houses, around 
the close. No, nothing there; all given up to prebends 
and canons. Few bills were out, in the town. A new 
large house with bath-room at ;£"7o? Too new and too 
dear! 

Then to a house agent. He was a prim, staid man, 
much interested as to my being a responsible person, 
but having but a meagre list indeed. I recalled a half- 
forgotten truth so laboriously learned, that it is a work 
of time and difficulty to discover a suitable habitation in 
a small, unfrequented town. 

That I wanted something old and to a certain extent 
romantic, goes without saying, something itself a part 



294 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

of the traditions for which it was worth while to seek 
such a place. The only thing that faintly promised to 
come within my conditions was a house on a small 
street called Best Lane, near the little old church of 
All Saints, and a short way off "theigh," or High 
Street. But when I came to see it, its front was more 
dingy with soot than age, and it resembled an ugly 
schoolhouse. It was not yet " done up " within, the 
repairs awaiting the coming of a tenant; and it was 
showing its displeasure, after the way of abandoned 
houses, by dropping its plaster and its wall-paper in 
shreds on the floor. It was three stories high, large 
enough and to spare, and quite without "conveniences." 
It cost ^35 a year and the taxes, generally calculated 
at one-fifth more, amounting to ;£"42 in all, or $210. 
Its back yard had a little wooden pavilion, which an 
amateur photographer had used for a work-room, and 
which partly overhung a brook, or river, the Stour. 
So far so good; the stream looked too clear and swift 
to breed any fevers. The cathedral towers were in 
sight, and there was a touch of quaintness about the 
rest of the houses in Best Lane. Notably, you could 
go through a doorway, just below, into a diminutive 
quadrangle called Best Lane Square, also on the Stour, 
where half a dozen neat, low, brick dwellings, with 
lace half-curtains and flower-pots on their window- 
ledges, gave a pleasant picture of English lower mid- 
dle-class life. 

In brief, Canterbury might do at a pinch, — a very great 
pinch. Canterbury was noted down. I began to know 
about what to expect, and to penetrate the obscurity of 
relative English prices. 

I traversed London, this time without stop, going on 



A NEW PILGRIMAGE 295 

to Oxford, sixty-three miles away. We know what Haw- 
thorne has said of Oxford: " It is a despair to see such 
a place and ever to leave it." So it seems almost like 
wickedness to approach it from the practical side; but 
should I once begin to talk sentimentally of its green 
meadows and green grass plots in its quadrangles; of its 
lovely mellow atmosphere, its rich, gray, sculptured, 
ivy-clad antiquity, all-pervading, pensive, and haunt- 
ing, I should never have done, and this valuable treat- 
ise on domestic economy must come to a standstill. 
No, let the problem of a habitation be settled first and 
then I might be enthusiastic to my heart's content. 

It was out of term-time, and, so, quieter than usual. 
The agent to whom I addressed myself had, strangely 
enough, lived in America and brought back American 
ideas. He took me a long stroll, down St. Aldate's 
Street, past Pembroke and magnificent old Christ 
Church, and across Folly Bridge, to the Abingdon 
Road, where he was building some houses of his own. 
They were houses on the American plan, a block of 
them, small, neat three-story brick dwellings, with all 
the conveniences, at ;£"42 a year, inclusive of taxes. 
They were near the boating facilities, if one liked to 
indulge in them, Folly Bridge being the centre of ac- 
tivity on the classic Isis. A stretch of marshy meadow- 
land extended in front, which I much fear was com- 
pletely under water in the winter. There are times 
when, with the abundance of floods, Oxford is little 
more than an island in the far-spreading Thames. 

But, every question of comfort or price apart, had I 
come to Oxford to live in a modern American abode? 
No, what was wanted was a section of a ruined abbey, 
a moated grange or manor of moderate size, or a her- 



296 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

mitage, redeemed for modern uses. My agent was 
puzzled at the taste, for even an American family, who 
had lately come there, one member with a purpose of 
study, had said to him, '' We want no more old rook- 
eries. " And when an American family talks thus, it 
means a good deal. 

He was at a loss, too. What I wanted was not easy 
to find. Out on the Iffley Road, across the other 
bridge, the beautiful stone Magdalen Bridge, over the_ 
Cherwell, was a shabby little stuccoed house, one of a 
row, for ^48 ; and then another which was said to be 
to let, but was not to let at all. I heard that all was 
modern, in the fashionable northward quarter, near 
University Park, the direction in which the city is 
chiefly expanding. The painstaking agent promised to 
make me up a list. I returned for it at the appointed 
time, but, if he had any choice things such as I wished, 
he did not let me know it. There was a large, old, 
damp, musty house, on New Inn Hall Street, opposite 
the "Union." It spread widely on the street, had a 
separate servants' entrance and some wainscoted rooms, 
but was excessively public in its situation, and was 
y^i2o a year. What could not one get in the Riviera 
for $600 a year! 

Then, abandoning agents, I began to look with zeal 
in the streets about the colleges. I secretly hoped to 
find something habitable on the High Street, opposite 
that exquisite porch of St. Mary the Virgin, with its 
twisted pillars and its statues, or by the grass-plot in 
Oriel Street, or at that focus of great charm, in Mer- 
ton Street, where Corpus Christi College and Oriel and 
the fine gate of Christ Church quadrangle come to- 
gether. You observe what ambitious ideas. Bref ! 



A NEW PILGRIMAGE 297 

nothing, nothing! The streets about the colleges are 
all occupied by either shops or students' lodgings. 

It was on this quest that I had occasion to look into 
some of these lodgings. You see the students' caps, 
foils, and characteristic knickknacks hung up in some 
very gloomy, damp, unhealthy interiors. In the worst, 
the landlord had the assurance to suggest: "The rooms 
are very h-airy, sir." Men can live any where, perhaps, 
especially those of this fine young breed, so hardened 
by all athletic sports; but I wished there, as I have 
wished in university towns nearer home, that the august 
authorities might abate a part of their learning, throw 
their erudite science into more practical form, and con- 
descend to the plain duty of making the hygienic wel- 
fare of the students their first and most pressing consid- 
eration. 

I seemed fairly driven at length to the confessedly 
new quarter, and, taking the tram, from Carfax up St. 
Giles Street and the Banbury Road, a longish ride, I 
arrived near University Park. Though driven there, 
as I say, it did not prove a regrettable fate after all. 
Comfortable modernness, softened by gardens, by the 
forever old and forever new caress of nature, has noth- 
ing disagreeable in it. The new Margaret Hall, for 
women, is in that part of the town. The late Prince 
Leopold, when he was in residence, lived out that way. 
It is a long way from market — the Prince of course had 
cared nothing for that — but, on the other hand, you 
have the tramway, at but penny fares. 

To live out there, with venerable Oxford to descend 
to every day — that seemed a tenable idea, at last, and 
a good one. 

"East Broxley House," so let me call the house, 



293 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Norham Road ! The other half was " West Broxley, " in 
a stately fashion they have of giving names to dwellings 
not at all important. A pretty, double brick house, 
standing free, in considerable foliage, with three stories 
and mansard, a covered porch, a bay-window to the 
drawing-room, and all in excellent order, for ;£$4. I 
saw the other half, charmingly furnished, and thus saw 
what could be made of it. For such a house in, say, New 
Haven, Conn., probably $500 or $600 would be de- 
manded — 7my/i a bath-room, however, which this did 
not have. 

Oxford, forty-five thousand people. Outside of the 
colleges a small shop-keeping community. The town 
governed with a Puritanical strictness; no cafe's chan- 
tants, none of the conventional animation of Conti- 
nental life. It might be rather dull for strangers, in a 
social way ; but that would not dismay us. The legion 
of generous youth pouring through its streets must give 
it at least a pleasant surface gayety. Winter, bare and 
chilly! if you get a cold there, it hangs on as if it would 
never abandon its grip. 

A maid-servant would cost from jQ\2 to ;£2o a year. 
Would she wear pretty pink ribbons in her cap, like the 
one at the Mitre ? I fear not. They call the maids- 
of-all-work "generals." To get a good "general" in 
England, now, is not as easy as it once was; maids 
want to be employed by threes together, to cover all 
divisions of labor. Provisions would cost what I came 
to call the usual price; there seems to be some law by 
which beef is about a shilling a pound, and eggs are 
from a shilling to a shilling and a half a dozen every- 
where. 

Next, to get our traps over by sea from the Riviera 



A NEW PILGRIMAGE ^99 

to London, and by rail from London to Oxford, we 
must count on an expense, say, of one hundred dollars, 
and have to count also upon their going back again 
some day. And then all our railroad fares — for the 
distance is long — hum! hum! Still, Oxford would do. 
I distinctly set down that Oxford would do, on that last 
afternoon when I stood alone in the dim noble quadran- 
gle of Christ Church College. Its bell, famous " Great 
Tom," pealed out measured chimes with a sort of heart- 
break in the sweet notes, while the rain fell gently on 
the rich green grass. Rain was falling too on Merton 
Fields and rain on Addison's Walk, soaking those lush 
green meadows and half veiling the deer in the pensive 
vistas. They pay a price for that delightful verdure, 
in the ceaseless fall of rain. My thoughts could not 
but wander back to the orange and rose trees of Ville- 
franche, to the shadow turning round the rod on our 
sun-dial, to the table set out upon the terrace, and to 
all the summer days coming back. Still, there was not 
the slightest doubt that Oxford would do. 

The court town and London suburb was Windsor, 
fifteen thousand people. As a court town I seemed to 
prefer Versailles, even though its court was gone for a 
hundred years past. The royal standard on the keep 
and a few scattering sentries in scarlet did not save the 
castle from the prison-like austerity its vast masses of 
gray granite suggest. A renewed acquaintance with 
the Vandykes, in the somewhat florid state apartments, 
a jaunt to Eton College, and part way to Virginia Water 
by the Long Walk constituted my incidental sight-see- 
ing. The town, apart from the castle, is respectable, 
ephemeral-looking, and without interest. The obliging 
house-and-estate agent who sent me down to Osborne 



300 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Terrace, Osborne Road, is perhaps still looking for me to 
come back. I had to return the key to an honest man, a 
butcher or baker, in Frances Road ; they left me quite 
alone in the house. On the way thither you would often 
be reminded of Orange, New Jersey, or similar quiet, 
proper American towns. Then there were whole tracts 
covered with petty brick cottages of a humble order. 
Not a few of these had ambitious names, such as " Prim- 
rose Cottage," "Britannia Villas, "and the like, though 
so poor, shabby, and wretchedly damp that it would be 
gross flattery to call them even genteel. 

Osborne Terrace, ^60 a year, was a three-story, 
"high-stoop," brick, eighteen-foot dwelling, with be- 
columned portico ; iron balcony before the drawing- 
room window; a patch of yard, with an evergreen, in 
front, and a long strip at the rear, divided from the 
neighbors by hedges. It would be a very good house 
for the money in an American town. The only pecu- 
liarity I recollect about it within was that it was all di- 
vided into good large rooms, and none of the boxes we 
call hall-bedrooms. The outlook at both ends of the 
street was pleasant. To the east, you saw the trees of 
the Long Walk, where anybody might go and stroll. ' 
Those trees were practically leafless still, royal though 
they were, and, in the matter of long walks, well! a 
long walk of our owi>, far to the southward, would in- 
sist on seeming superior to all others. 

Why speak of London ? I looked about there a little, 
but not with much heart. I was told we could go and 
live respectably somewhere for a rent of £60. Sup- 
posing it had been under the murky glooms of Bedford 
Park, or some other monotonous flat half-suburb? 
Would an occasional run in Kew Gardens, when the 



A NEW PILGRIMAGE 30I 

heavens did not pour, have been compensation enough ? 
Or suppose we had gone to Hampstead Heath, where I 
hear there is quite a literary and artistic colony. All 
the same, we should have been fatiguing miles and 
miles from everything. The English like to lecture us 
upon our haste and worry in living; but it seems to me 
there can be no other spot in the world where such fa- 
tigue, such endless travel by rail or cab, are a necessary 
preliminary to every detail of life, every petty visit, 
every attempt at profit or pleasure, as in London. Life 
is almost defeated by its own unwieldiness. 

That there is a certain pleasant bustle about it all is 
undeniable, but would it be a sufficient offset to the 
rest to learn to swing a knowing umbrella at the " Sa- 
ville Club," the "Hogarth," the "Cri," the "Seven 
Bells;" to know how to take the proper 'bus to Hyde 
Park Corner ; to be cheek by jowl with great names, the 
publishing interest, the new American leaven — with pic- 
tures, books, the measures of the day ? Would the infant 
at Villefranche welcome the exchange? Well, hardly. 

I see that George Gissing, in that book which em- 
bodies so many woful experiences with a vivid appear- 
ance of truth, his "New Grub Street," thinks literary 
men ought not to live in London at all. 

" Not after they know it," you hasten to rectify. 

I stand corrected ; and I shall aspire to know it, then, 
some time, to the most favorable advantage. 

But meantime, nothing seemed to shine in murky 
London, except an occasional door-knocker. Was one 
to be content with the gleam of a brass door-knocker 
when he had been used to the full sun of the Mediter- 
ranean ? And so it was settled that, if we moved at 
all, we should move to Italy. 



CHAPTER XXV 

SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY FROM PISA, LUCCA 

AND THE BATHS OF LUCCA TO ROME 

I THINK I shall some time write an article on " Trav- 
ellers' Drivers." On comparing the accounts of jour- 
neys, these gentry are found to occupy a remarkable 
place in the foreground. They agree in general raci- 
ness of character, a tendency to quaint sayings, un- 
trustworthy information, and tricky bargaining. But 
has attention enough ever been given to the extent to 
which they redeem their faults and make return for 
value received by filling up the traveller's pages? 

Within a fortnight after the return from the English 
journey, as heretofore described, I set off anew, for 
Italy, on yet another house-hunting trip. I too had a 
driver — but I shall postpone an account of him till the 
article in question, only mentioning here that he told 
me that, in the place to which we were first bound, houses 
were not only cheap, but positively given away. 

I had left Pisa behind, its famous monuments show- 
ing in the distance like some great travelling show 
turned to stone; and I had left behind the clean little 
ducal city of Lucca. At Lucca, the Sunday bells 
chimed in the early morning. You look down from the 
green ramparts into the gardens of many pretty villas, 
with marble lions on their gateposts. In one, a troop 
of Bernini statues, the kind that are all so intensely on 

302 



SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 303 

the move, seemed rehearsing among themselves for pri- 
vate theatricals. Yet I had not asked the price of any 
dwelling in Lucca, and had not even looked at any in 
Pisa. The country was flat, and the impression of the 
sixty-three days winter's rain, statistics give it, as 
against only thirty-six to Nice, was perhaps unduly 
strong, at this opening stage. There was no resolution 
arrived at to leave the Villa des Amandiers; in many 
respects we could hardly hope to find its equal. Still, 
it is scarce in human nature to rest content with any 
situation, no matter how pleasant, if a chance remains 
of bettering it. It seemed, too, in an educational sense, 
almost a matter of clear duty, to spend the next year in 
Italy. At any rate, I had set off to spy out the land. 
The drive was a rather hard one, of sixteen miles up to 
the Baths of Lucca, in the mountain. The Baths of 
Lucca is a nice little summer resort, rather fallen from 
once greater popularity, and we thought it might possibly 
do for winter also. Its decline in popularity could 
scarcely harm it in our eyes and for our purposes, but 
rather the contrary. 

The place proved to be a mere secluded vale by a 
tumbling stream, which would now recall the Catskills 
and now, with its smooth, civilized walk between two 
principal villages, Pau or Dinan. There was a deep, 
lush greenness about it, too, an English look here and 
there — the doing of former English proprietors who had 
left behind them some hedges and spaces of green lawn 
— that most refreshing of rarities in these southerly lati- 
tudes. The landlady of the inn told us she had lately 
had her house quite full only of English and American 
women, with not a man among them. 

A small principal street with shops; a few gray tow- 



304 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

ers ; a crowd of peasants at the bridge, all men ; a neat 
bath establishment ; a casino, with a cheerful frieze of 
musical instruments sculptured all round it ; small hotels, 
and apartments to let, such was the Baths of Lucca. In 
spite of my driver's information, the prices really were 
cheap. You could have a furnished house, a quiet, 
restful place, with a grass plot before it, in the centre 
of things, for 800 francs the season, and not much 
more, I judged, for the whole of the year. That was 
the very best there was. The neatest, most taking, 
on the whole, was an apartment, for 400 francs, in the 
house of Signora E O . It had four good bed- 
rooms, a salon, and quite a vast dining-room, all very 
nicely furnished. From the back, you looked out upon 
a strip of garden, and high up to the third village of 
the group, cresting the slope of the hill. It was hot 
that day with a humid, oppressive heat, though but the 
nth of May. It would no doubt be cold enough in 
winter, by way of recompense; but life then, at the far 
end of so long a drive, could not fail to be almost too 
hermit-like. 

I kept on southward, to Rome, by way of Civita Vec- 
chia. The most surprising feature, after an absence of 
sixteen years, was the prosperous appearance of those 
once half-waste and fever-stricken districts, the Ma- 
remme and the Campagna. Excellent new buildings 
and fences, haymakers at work, grain-fields and vine- 
yards, fine cattle and sheep, gave tangible sign of the 
rise of new Italy, the extent to which the old order 
was changing. The fresh young kingdom, having 
made an Italy, had next to make Italians; and it is 
making them to good advantage, even in the plain 
about the gates of Rome which immemorial tradition 



SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 305 

had taught us to shrink from as poisonous. In cross- 
ing the Campagna by the branch railroads to Frascati 
and Albano, or flying out to charming Tivoli by the 
steam tramway, continually laden with merry excur- 
sionists, you find it full of fragrant hay, and of flocks 
and herds and their able-bodied keepers. The people, 
both men and women, look well and content, the chil- 
dren as chubby and thriving, as could be expected even 
in districts of far better repute. 

I did not neglect to seek our quarters too in the sub- 
urban villages on the foothills of the Alban and Sabine 
mountains, within a radius of twenty-five miles of Rome ; 
in Frascati, more spruce and modern, Albano, older 
and dingier, and Tivoli, apparently protected forever 
against the commonplace by its site on the grand cliffs, 
and its temple of the Sibyl looking down upon the 
foaming milk-like cataracts. And yet what think you 
was the latest at Tivoli ? The cataracts had been made 
to turn the wheels furnishing power for the motors that 
were to give Rome a blaze of electric light worthy of the 
splendid court of the Quirinal. 

Villas and apartments were few and far between. As 
a rule they were furnished, so that it began to look as 
if the ownership of furniture of one's own might not be 
such an advantage, after all. Without regard, too, to 
relative climates and comforts, and judging only by the 
standard I had left behind me, they were dear. The 
350,000 inhabitants of Rome reserve these suburban 
villages chiefly to themselves and their summer outings, 
and competition keeps up the prices. A rude, unfur- 
nished villa, near the bridge, at Ariccia, the property 
of some Roman prince, would have been, if I had taken 
it, 1,500 francs. 
20 



3o6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

What most nearly tempted me was a large old house 
at Castel Gandolfo, with a garden at the rear looking 
across the wide Campagna to misty Rome. It was 
pleasantly furnished, it is true, but, in front, all the 
population of the main street crowded up against its 
doorsteps; and when the local omnibus was off duty, it 
also seemed to be laid up there. Would it have been 
put down to a low-priced'figure, on that account? Per- 
haps, but I doubt it. And even if it had been, who 
can say whether it would have been worth it at any 
figure? Some put their ideal of comfort in one thing, 
and some in another; for myself, an important part of 
it is *' elbow-room," the right to be decently let alone. 
It is not to disrelish one's fellow-creatures to feel in this 
way, heaven forbid! On the contrary, does not one 
issue forth with sympathies all the fresher and readier 
to enter helpfully into their concerns, if he does not 
collide too closely with them and have their small mis- 
eries under his eye at every instant ? The country all 
about was full of charm. There were smooth roads 
and pleasant footpaths shaded by ancient trees, the 
old papal palace on top of the ridge, the Campagna on 
one side and Lake Albano on the other; and a little 
further on, beyond Ariccia, the smaller Lake of Nemi, 
as virginal and lonely as if in some primeval forest of 
America. Yes, other things being propitious, I should 
have chosen Castel Gandolfo above all. 

The new districts of Rome, the great modern up- 
heaval of which we hear so much about, are not im- 
mediately obvious to the new-comer upon his arrival, 
except that of course he sees at once the new quarter 
of the Quirinal, the latest grand hotel, the fine bustling 
new thoroughfare of the Via Nazionale, for all these 



SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 307 

are on his way in descending from the station. What 
a delicious gHmpse of emerald green garden through 
the archway of the royal palace! What splendid colos- 
sal cuirassiers on guard ! It is such a pity that anything 
unpleasant should have grown out of the coming of the 
court to Rome, for the royalties are, as royalties go, so 
good a pair. Queen Margherita is so especially sweet and 
charming a woman, and Italian unity a cause to be so 
worthily and genuinely enthusiastic about. By reason 
of the stimulus imparted by the arrival of the court, 
there had been a tremendous overbuilding and over- 
speculation in land. Political movements, the war of 
tariffs with France, brought on the collapse. In the 
year 1889 alone, there was a falling-off in exports to 
the amount of $30,000,000; and $30,000,000 would 
pay for a good deal of building, either in Italy or else- 
where. Mr. Crawford has well used this dramatic latter- 
day material in his novel of "Don Orsino." 

A certain Prince Borghese, whose ancestor had en- 
riched himself by an earlier building of Rome, was now 
bankrupted by the same cause. There were said to be 
whole settlements of new buildings, out at the Porta 
Pia and the Porta Salara, standing doorless, window- 
less, and roofless, falling to pieces even before they 
were finished. One does not wish to profit by the mis- 
fortunes of his neighbors, but, since this situation ex- 
isted, by no fault of ours, I had an idea that we might 
be driven to install ourselves, at a mere nominal rent, 
in some grand new suite of apartments, and that we 
should try to make with a good grace the sacrifice of 
taste necessary for that purpose. 

There was little change in the better portion of old 
Rome — the portion that tradition has long assigned as 



308 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the Strangers' Quarter. Ten chances to one, your 
friends who go abroad write their letters from the 
Corso, or the Via del Babuino, or the Piazza di Spagna, 
or from one or two of the streets up at the top • of its 
vast staircase, on the Pincian. These last were much 
the best of all, but the apartments were chiefly furnished, 
for the use of temporary sojourners, and were well 
charged for, even at American standards. Quarters 
for permanent occupation were scarce to be had. If 
you will look at the map, you will see, too, that, in the 
precinct below, you could not get much sun for any 
price, for the principal streets run in such a way that it 
cannot enter the windows. On the Pincian it was dif- 
ferent. I should not have minded at all living at num- 
ber blank Via Sistina or number blank San Trinita de' 
Monti. The sun, a wide view down the Spanish Steps, 
a sculptured house, w^ith flowers on its loggia^ in front, 
and in five minutes' walk, or so, you could reach the 
fountain of the Villa Medici, and look off from under 
the live oaks at the famous sunset view of St. Peter's, 
or watch the defile of carriages in the park. But one 
of these apartments was 400 francs a month, and the 
other 180; and this, you see, was not within our con- 
ditions. I was turned back, here, with great reluctance, 
and only by default of the proper sort of bills " To 
Let." 

The search in Rome was long, not only because, as 
elsewhere, house-hunting would naturally lapse into 
sight-seeing, but still more from the quite surprising 
lack of accommodations, I began to traverse the city 
vigorously in all directions, leaving the question of 
salubrity to be settled after a choice, in other respects 
attractive, had been made. But I found that foreigners 



SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 309 

long resident in Rome, acquaintance to whom I brought 
letters, scouted the idea of any settled portion of Rome 
being unhealthy. There was one who told me he had 
repeatedly driven across the Campagna, as late as 
eleven o'clock at night, while spending his summers at 
Albano, and had never come to any harm. If every- 
body could only settle the problem of living in Rome 
as he had! An American of intelligence, literary cul- 
ture, and wealth, he had taken an ancient palace by 
Bramante, and become almost more Roman than the 
Romans themselves. I do not know that I envied him 
his severe entrance court, with a few dull shrubs on the 
staircase, — no glowing oranges, no rosy oleanders, 
prodigal of fragrance, here! — nor even his spacious 
chambers, bright with color and attractive with good 
taste; but when we came to his library, I distinctly did, 
and do, envy him. What a room, mes amis^ what a 
room! Many a public library of much pretence could 
be contained within it. Books from the floor to the 
lofty ceiling; a music-gallery at one end, a platform 
at the other. It might once have been a state banquet- 
ing-hall, and yet, vast as it was, it was so skilfully ar- 
ranged as to have plenty of comfort and even cosiness. 
If one could not walk up and down there and compose 
immortal works of genius, it surely would be simply 
his own fault. 

Palaces of lesser size were not to be had, or at least 
accommodations in them suited to a small family. I 
had prepared myself to put up with a certain amount of 
gloom in consideration of historic grandeur, but even 
this sacrifice was not permitted. The apartments were 
all very large and expensive, and, furthermore, would 
be let only for a term of years. I was directed to the 



3 TO A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Palazzo Altemps, one of the gray old sort, with heavily 
barred windows, ancient statuary, and staircase disap- 
pearing under a cavernous arch, with a "Hark! from 
the tombs " effect. There was nothing, th.Q portiere^ or 
janitor, had nothing, nor did he even know of anything 
elsewhere. (This was one of the unpromising features, 
the way people, friends and all, rarely knew of any- 
thing.) But stay! yes, he did, and he would have pi- 
loted me into a respectable dark alley, where, he said, 
there was a flat of six rooms, on an inner court. At 
Bernini's Palazzo Odescalchi, a colossal doorkeeper, 
in blue livery, conducted me to a business office, on the 
lower floor, where a bustling young administrator told 
me he had nothing but an apartment on the second story 
for 5,000 francs, or $1,000 a year. The only thing I 
recollect in the department of palaces was a dark ap- 
pendage of the Palazzo Borghese, in a back street near 
the river. At first sight of its entrance, with two big 
brass knockers and without a conciei'ge^ you would have 
said, " Here is a quiet, small, studio sort of building 
which may be made to serve; " but it developed, as you 
went on and upward, into fourteen chambers and two 
terraces. It remained nearly as dark within as without, 
and it had not a single fireplace, which might be taken 
either as an indication that the winters were very mild, 
or that the usual inmates did not mind cold. 

In the Forum of Trajan they were making over a 
modern building, and eight rooms on the third floor 
were 900 francs. The afternoon shadows of the broken 
columns of the Forum were falling westward to the left 
hand, which showed that the house faced due north. 
The square, moreover, seemed too stirring, scrambling, 
and noisy; it did not pay the least attention to the ruins 



SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 31I 

in its midst. How many streets I traversed looking 
longingly at the southern exposures! In vain: others 
had been there before me. You know that in Italy, if 
the sun does not come into your house, the doctor must. 
But it is hardly reasonable to expect that the inhabi- 
tants should have kept their best locations free for the 
convenience of a desultory traveller. Do we not all 
know of persons at home, who have waited even for 
years for some desirable house, and who, when they have 
secured it, hold on to it thereafter with a ceaseless 
jealousy of vigilance? 

In the wide piazza of St. Peter's, north again! If 
you had felt like clambering up to the fifth story of a 
good large house, stuccoed and yellow-washed, you 
could have had six rooms for a monthly rental of 90 
francs. This was proportionately dearer than at Paris. 
The staircase was marble, wide, bright, and easy, but 
not very clean, and a janitor worked at shoemaking in 
a varnished pine box at the foot. It is true that the 
rear windows must have got some southern sunshine, as 
the front faced north, but these were in only the minor 
chambers, and opened above a large court where much 
washing hung out. They had also a glimpse of green 
Mount Janiculus. Fancy having a view of Mount Ja- 
niculus from one of your windows, and the soft, beau- 
tiful grandeur of St. Peter's from another! I need not 
dwell upon this. I might make a similar exclamation 
almost everywhere, for each separate quarter had its 
monument of world-wide fame which irresistibly became 
a centre for the quest. Not to yield to any mere preju- 
dice, I even tried the vicinity of the Colosseum. The 
Colosseum closed in one end of the street, and an om- 
nibus passed the door for St. John Lateran. Though 



312 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

the houses were new and good, their interior finish was 
rude and harsh and the rooms were few in number. 
They were such as might be adapted to superior work- 
ing-men or minor clerks. 

Then, at last, I sought the freshly built parts of Rome 
in which people were said to have ruined themselves. 
I went from the Dan of Porta Pia to the Beersheba of 
Prati di Castello, from the Land's End of St. John 
Lateran to the John O' Groat's of the Villa Ludovisi. 
I say nothing against the twelve-room apartment in the 
pink and yellow six-story house, on the Via Principe 
Amadeo, except that it was twice too big for us, and 
that it was 3,000 francs. The royal House of Savoy 
has been honored by giving the name of each of its mem- 
bers to a wide, trim, vacant, characterless street, here 
on the resuscitated Esquiline. I ruled out entirely the 
abandoned, roofless, and doorless dwellings — which, 
after all, were very few. However cheap they might 
be in themselves, they surely were not practicable for 
just such a family as ours. 

"Why do you not go to the Villa Ludovisi?" was a 
question that had been often asked me, and to the Villa 
Ludovisi I went, as I have said. It is in the north part 
of the town, back of Hawthorne's famous church, the 
Cappuccini. It was once the garden of Sallust, and 
then a seventeenth-century villa, with a famous collec- 
tion of pictures and statues. The region was all a dusty 
chaos of preparations. The clink of the mason's ham- 
mer and the pitfall of mortar-beds were on every hand. 
It was all as ugly as possible, and it was not even cheap ! 
In the first place, there were scarce any bills out; and 
in the next place, if you found, say, a mezzanino — the 
French entresol^ or half-story — in some huge, windy, 



SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 313 

granite tenement house, it was straightway 170 francs 
a month. The Prati di Castello was worse yet, for 
there they asked just as much, for the same number of 
rooms — eight — in the same kind of a house, but on the 
top story instead. Surely demand had again overtaken 
supply, or else the prices had been so forced up in Rome 
that people could not afford to come down again, even 
when they were ruined. 

You cross to that side of the Tiber by crude iron truss 
bridges that make a grievous contrast to the rich old 
bridge of St. Angelo, covered with its statues. The 
banks of the Tiber look as if a new sack by Alaric or 
the Constable of Bourbon were going on, and the re- 
construction is worse than the demolition. It would 
be childish to object to much-needed reforms which let 
in light and air, sanitation and convenience ; but what 
is truly regrettable is that these should be presided over 
by some influence wholly at war with the great and 
beautiful traditions of the past. Whence comes this 
latter-day design, this poor, thin, cold, ephemeral archi- 
tecture, with scarce a string course, and without a deep 
shadow or a sky-hne? It produces rows of monoto- 
nous, factory-like, stuccoed buildings, riddled with small 
windows, and cold, bare streets and squares without a 
single ray of interest. Wherever the style first comes 
from, it is curious to note the wide extension it gets, 
for this is the same sort of thing you see at present in 
Madrid and such large provincial cities of France as 
Lyons and Marseilles. One is half driven to the con- 
clusion that the Latin temperament is in full reaction 
against its past, and that it has been old and artistic so 
long that it now takes a perverse pleasure in being new 
and ugly. Rome might be justly compared to a pretty 



314 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

woman ignorant of her own principal point of charm, 
and trying hard to suppress it. Rome, being above all 
other things ancient, seems to pride herself above all 
other things on being modern. 

No, we did not see on Palatinus the white porch of 
our home, and we did not speak, on terms that were to 
become those of daily companionship, to the noble river 
that rolls by the walls of Rome. We had been prepared 
to stand a considerable advance in price, to allow our- 
selves the luxury of living in Rome. I think we might 
have taken a small apartment on the fine Via Nazionale 
that had been a bachelor senator's, if we could have 
fitted it. I was told, however, that even the society, 
the foreign society in Rome was no longer what it used 
to be, in the days of tradition. People do not find 
Rome '' the city of the soul " to the same extent as for- 
merly ; they come and stay a short time as sight-seers, 
and move on to live somewhere else. 

The place I liked best of all, which was also the near- 
est within our means, was one in front of the glorious 
Campidoglio. It looked out on the two great staircases 
— the one at the left leading to the old brick church of 
Aracoeli ; the central one to the colossal Dioscuri mas- 
tering their horses, thoughtful Marcus A.urelius on his 
charger, and Michael Angelo's Capitol, that treasure- 
house of ancient sculpture. I had had a large photo- 
graph of that scene on my walls nearly all my life, and 
I should have been glad to make a living reality of it. 
On that oldest hill of Rome, with all the rest, you found 
bright painters' bits, as the officers of the Guardia 
Civile lounging in the angles of Aracoeli, and, going on 
a step, you contrasted the old red brick of the church 
against the chief district of the classic ruins below, and 



SPYING OUT THE LAND IN ITALY 315 

the prospect of the distant blue Alban Mountains. 
The place seemed to combine everything. It even made 
the first provision that had offered for the infant son, in 
the little street that zigzagged up hill and became a 
pretty park, near to all that is still left of the Tarpeian 
Rock. There was no bill out on that apartment, but I 
had got in the way, by that time, of applying even at 
places where there were no bills out. 

But what think you now ? the apartment could not 
be seen, I could judge of it only by hearsay, and it 
would not be vacant before October, and perhaps not 
even then. 



CHAPTER XXVI 



VENICE 



I HAD at no time thought of going any farther south 
than Rome. Inclement north winds pursue you in win- 
ter even to Capri and Palermo. If you took up your 
abode in the fascinating island of Capri, you might find 
yourself cut off from the mainland by raging gales for 
a week at a time. You have to go down as far as Ca- 
tania, on the slopes of Etna, to be really comfortable 
in winter, and that was much too far. By that time, 
you are well on your way to Malta and Egypt, and, if 
climate be the chief object, you might as well continue 
yet further. 

So I turned northward again. I shall only say of 
Siena, where there is usually some English colony, that 
the people I had chanced to know who had tried it spoke 
in an aggrieved way of its penetrating cold and damp- 
ness. That this cannot logically be given as a sufficient 
objection will be seen later on, but for the moment it 
was sufficient. Perugia I crossed off at once. If we were 
to be led to pedestrianize to the other Umbrian towns 
round about, — of which there is so taking a view from 
the chief piazza — we could never endure, on each occa- 
sion, to have to descend and ascend again, by the glar- 
ing road, that interminable hill. Of the town, too, and 
the sitting statue of Pope Julius, it is rather the beau- 

316 



317 

tiful genius of Hawthorne that has made them, than 
they themselves. There was a quaint incident in prog- 
ress at the time, making what was possibly an unusual 
stir of life. The carabinieri had killed the dog of an 
innocent fellow, in the belief that the animal was mad, 
and the owner, having no journal at his command, was 
distributing printed handbills all over town to vin- 
dicate the memory of his dog and bring opprobrium 
upon the ruthless slayers. 

Florence is another of those places which are sup- 
posed to have been ruined by the royal court. A period 
of over-inflation was caused by the coming of the court, 
which collapsed on its departure to Rome. Such is the 
story, and you are constantly hearing that you can have 
lodgings there for a song; you would almost think it 
was a sort of Tadmor of the wilderness. But observe 
that the court departed for Rome some twenty years 
ago, and there has been plenty of time since for things 
to equalize themselves. Florence is certainly cheaper 
than Rome, but the cheapness is relative, after all. 
The population do not flock in mass to put their dwell- 
ings at your disposition, as the unsophisticated may 
suppose, and to beg you to take them at any price. If 
I should detail all my experiences there, it would make 
a long catalogue, but I saw no real bargains such as I 
have had occasion to mention in several of the French 
towns. And yet how more than ever relative it is, when 
you think of all the different tastes and requirements! 
I am aware that it is quite inexcusable to put our own 
so much in the foreground. It is one problem if you 
want to have the Uffizi, the Duomo, and the Academy, 
that contains Michael Angelo's David, within easy reach, 
and quite another thing if you have seen the great gal- 



3l8 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

leries about enough, and are almost to be satisfied with 
climate alone. 

English influence is apparent in Florence. It is re- 
called to you by the three churches, and by the racing- 
shells you see dart out occasionally from the arches of 
the Ponte Vecchio. There is a bright spruceness about 
the approaches to some of the apartments. More care 
seems given to "modern conveniences" than in Rome; 
fixed bath-tubs are not wholly unknown, and kitchens 
are often at the top of the house, to let off the smoke 
and odors inoffensively. The villino at Florence sup- 
plies to a small extent the call for detached houses. 
On the Viale, the boulevard around the town, and vari- 
ous other broad avenues it crosses, are places so de- 
voted to villinos^ in their shady dooryards, that you 
might half fancy yourself in New Haven or Cleveland. 
The villinos are occasionally arranged for two families, 
and the proprietor often desired to remain below and 
keep the garden to himself. One of them would not 
receive a child on any terms, not even the most winning, 
tranquil, and exceptional one on the face of the earth. 
It was our very first hint of such limitations. Would 
it ever be credited when I should report it back at 
the Villa des Amandiers? would there be Junonian 
wrath, maternal scorn and resentment ? I should rather 
think so. 

American influence, of course, is counted in with the 
English, in Florence, though here too the permanent 
colony does not seem to be what it has been in other 
days. To sum up, a fairish apartment would cost from 
1,200 to 1,800 francs a year, a figure for which you 
could make yourself very much more comfortable in or 
about Nice. At those prices, you could either be lo- 



FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 319 

cated remote from the centre, in the Via Montebello. 



near the public gardens, or in a part of a villino by the 
Mugnone, a little tributary of the Arno, or, centrally, 
on a fourth story in the handsome Via Cavour. A first 
story in the same Via Cavour was 2,800 francs. It is 
true that it had an escutcheon over the doorway, and 
sixteen rooms, of which two were kitchens. It was 
hard to see why there should be two kitchens, especially 
in these days when Mr. Edward Atkinson, with his 
Aladdin oven, promises to spare us the need even of 
one, but so it was. 

Turning to the country, I did not find it so pleasing 
in vegetation, and, what was stranger yet, I did not find 
it a whit more Italian than what I had left behind me. 
How often is one driven to think that it is the Riviera 
which is the true Italy! That warm, sunny zone cor- 
responds more nearly than any other to the enthusiastic 
descriptions of travellers and poets, and has fixed our 
conceptions of what Italy should be. The view of Nice 
from the Col de Villefranche seemed to me finer than 
that of Florence from Fiesole. The climb to Fiesole 
is much like that from Nice to Cimiez, only longer, 
steeper, dustier, and the roadway is far more shut in 
between indefensibly high walls. When Boccaccio and 
his friends were weaving their tales, at the Earl of Craw- 
ford's villa, on this road, they could not have wanted 
to go into Florence very often, even apart from the 
great plague, unless they had excellent horses. When 
the lofty village is reached, it is a steep climb again to 
the point of view, at the Franciscan monastery. 

Surely the stars in their courses were fighting to re- 
tain us at the Villa des Amandiers. It is replied to 
those who lament the difficulty of getting literary fame, 



320 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

that, if it were not difficult, it would not be fame. So, 
I suppose, if it were not so difficult to find in the storied 
lands of Europe, or anywhere else, an inexpensive home 
with sufficient charm to almost defy wealth and luxury, 
it could not be half so much appreciated when found. 
It would be a defeat of the "Haves" by the "Have- 
nots," a reversal of the laws of political economy which 
prevail on one side of the ocean as well as on the other. 
It has been abundantly seen, by this time, that the ob- 
ject was to be attained only by long and arduous labor, 
aided too by very good luck. 

There was an instructive difference in the causes, 
though the result — the shortage of desirable dwellings 
— was everywhere pretty much the same. My next 
important attempt was at Venice. I venture to say, 
you would, on general principles, have wagered on there 
being better chances in Venice than anywhere else — in 
old Venice, mouldering on its miles of labyrinthine 
canals, the city that had once had 200,000 people, and 
then dwindled to 96,000, But go house-hunting there, 
and you will find, with unwelcome surprise, that it has 
perhaps fewest openings of all. Apart from the liberal 
provision of dear furnished lodgings for the strangers 
who come to pass a month or two in the spring and 
autumn, there is very little to choose from. Nor is this 
any mere fiction of interested house-agents. Venice has 
got back now a population of about 140,000, and, 
allowing for the buildings that have disappeared in 
the mean time, is none too large for her inhabitants. 
Her day of prosperity has returned. Her position as a 
chief port of the new kingdom of Italy, the revival of 
a natural commercial advantage, and other favoring 
conditions have made her a great shipping mart, a manu- 



FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 32 1 

facturing town, and a popular bathing-resort. It has 
a decidedly American ring when people cite to you the 
manufacturing concerns that have lately moved here, 
and the number of hands each employs. 

The Grand Canal begins to take on a very commer- 
cial look ; large signs are out upon the palaces in a way 
that recalls the march of trade up Fifth Avenue, New 
York. A few Englishmen and Americans who pur- 
chased homes on this thoroughfare, years ago, unwit- 
tingly joined a shrewd business speculation to their 
choice of residence. Among such residents are the 
Brownings; the Rezzonico palace will be forever iden- 
tified with their name. No royalty whatever has nobler 
accommodations than Browning's son, the artist, in 
this palace, which is possibly kept up now with greater 
perfection than in its own historic day. A vast ball- 
room and interminable suites of reception-rooms, hung 
in figured silks, strike you with astonishment. Again, 
as before in the library I have mentioned at Rome, one 
wonders at the niggling taste of the American rich, 
at home, who will not do this grand and simple sort of 
thing, but lavish millions on houses like Chinese puzzle- 
boxes, covered with a chaos of chimney-stacks and 
dovecotes. Smooth beauty within contrasts with a 
fortress-like ruggedness without; for the palace is of an 
almost Cyclopean Renaissance, and not the gay, rosy 
Byzantine-Gothic which Ruskin and the painters have 
almost made our ideal of Venice. Huge embossed heads 
stare from the massive quoins, and the walls are so 
thick that a comfortable bed could easily be made up 
on the window-sills. 

I will describe two of the typical abodes I looked at 
in Venice, one large and one small. Everybody, at 
21 



322 



A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 



first, wishes to be on the Grand Canal ; then, after a 
sufficient experience of it, is willing to try some of the 
sheltered campi or quays of the interior. The first, then, 
was an apartment in a large sober palace on the Grand 
Canal. Need I say, again, that it looked northward? 
It had belonged to an American consul-general, who, 
having given up his post elsewhere, proposed to settle 
in Venice, as the place that pleased him best in all the 
world. He had tired of it and left his apartment for 
rent, and it was recommended to me by a competent 
judge, as the most reasonable thing he knew oi in all 




Sibout 65 feet 



UA-" 



AN APARTMENT IN VENICE. 



Venice. That the tendency of rents was upward will 
be seen from the fact that the present price was but i, 600 
francs, but it was specified in the lease that a renewal 
would be granted only at the rate of 1,700. 

The apartment was the one immediately above the 
piano nobile^ or principal story, and scarcely less large 
and lofty than that. The piano nohile itself is hardly 
ever let, but is kept for the proprietor. As there is also 
a high ground floor, devoted to water-entrance, storage 



FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 323 

of the surplus furniture of gondolas and the like, and to 
sleeping-chambers for the gondoliers, you have already 
a length of bare stone staircase to climb equal to a third 
or fourth story in Paris. A large antechamber, with 
a carved and gilded wooden altar from some old church, 
against one wall, opened into a great dining-room, and 
this in turn, on either hand, into a salon and principal 
bedroom, I paced the distance, and none of the three 
chambers varied far from thirty-six feet by twenty-one. 
The length of the bedroom was broken by an archway, 
giving a pleasant alcove. I at once opened the case- 
ment windows, which fitted ogival arches without. They 
were so high above the floor that a platform had been 
built to reach to them. A balcony all along the front 
was found to be too narrow to enter comfortably, and 
was intended chiefly for external ornament. 

" O, la bella situazione ! '' commendingly exclaimed 
the elderly factotum who came with me, to do the hon- 
ors, and it was perfectly easy to agree with him. " Cos- 
petto!'' he added at his leisure, which is like, "Good 
gracious! I should say so." 

I have sometimes, since then, tried to fancy our being 
there, shut in for want of solid land to walk on, and 
looking out at the rich, red, Byzantine palace and 
charming little house — with a bit of garden before it— 
across the way, and at the tramway steamers darting 
swiftly to the station of San Toma ; or again, in winter 
at the rain pelting incessantly into the leaden canal, or 
the snowflakes falling upon it, of the bitter winds har- 
rying it. I turned back to see what was in the rooms. 
All the floors were of the usual polished Roman cement, 
the doors were of some rather elegant hard wood, while 
the walls and ceiling had lost whatever distinction they 



324 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

once had, and were covered with a cheap paper of or- 
dinar)' design. Three monumental stoves (for burning 
wood) in tiles or tinted plaster, partly took away the 
bareness of the rooms; and the dining-room was fur- 
thermore helped out by two great canvases, some twelve 
feet square, showing, all in tones of faded green, two 
ancient Palladian villas with their gardens. At the first 
blush, the problem of furnishing such a huge place 
seemed terrifying; but, on reflection, I am convinced 
that it need not have been. Hangings would have done 
everything for the vacant walls, and in our day charm- 
ing hangings are no longer dear. On the whole, our 
effects would have gone very well in there, and we 
should at least have been something of a protest against 
the Anglo-Saxon vice of over-furnishing and dreadful 
stuffiness. 

The problems of heating and lighting were more for- 
midable. Our lamps could have penetrated that ample 
gloom but little. You could hardly dine a friend under 
such circumstances; and the evenings at home promised 
to be dull, when we were not listening to the music 
in the piazza or taking ices at Florian's. And all that 
is in default just at the time of year when you would 
need it the most. Going back to Venice, later, in mid- 
winter, to verify these impressions, I found snow moun- 
tains high all over the piazza of St. Mark's, as in an 
American blizzard; the shopping thoroughfare of the 
Merceria was ankle-deep in slush ; and our consul told 
me that he had never known any other climate where 
the damp cold penetrated so thoroughly to his marrow 
as here. 

The southern sun came into the kitchen and some 
other minor rooms, at the rear, from a court. You 



FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 325 

will see no kitchen on the plan I have made. The 
kitchen was down a half-story, with a whole series of 
small rooms for which we should have had no use at 
all. It had only two charcoal holes for cooking, and 
the water must be pumped up daily from below. These 
half-stories are managed in the height of the larger 
ones; for, naturally, there is no need of all the rooms 
being as lofty as those in which you receive the Queen 
of Cyprus or the ambassadors of the Ottoman Porte. 
Another half-story, up, was a great, brick-floored attic 
which would have made a magnificent play-room for 
children. Higher still, on the top of the roof, is often 
a wooden lookout, from which you can command all 
the red-tiled roofs of the city, and the snowy A^enetian 
Alps. It is an excellent idea, for the preservation of 
privacy, in Venice, that they give each apartment its 
separate street entrance. The palace is entered on all 
sides, from all sorts of dark little streets. The draw- 
back is that all but the principal tenant are cut off from 
arrival by the grand water-portal, which is something 
in which one would naturally take a good deal of pride. 
I have not room for the subject of the landlords I 
met. One was a Parisian grande dame^ with an exceed- 
ingly shrewd business talent, another was a Venetian 
widow, who held that she did not know how to bargain, 
and I rather think it was so. Another was a stately 
ecclesiastic in silk stockings, who offered me his apart- 
ment, of twenty vast rooms, in absolutely neat, perfect 
condition, and absolutely vacant of everything, for 
2, 500 francs ; but it must be taken for six years at least, 
and he would much prefer nine. There is a curious 
habit, as in Spain, of estimating rent by the day, no 
matter how long the period is for which you are to pay 



326 



A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 



it. I repeatedly heard rents divided up into ten francs, 
two francs and a half, and the like, per day. The 
Jewish element is strong among the landlords; it is said 
that one-third of the property in Venice is owned by 
the Jews. 

It would be much easier, I am sure, to imagine a pal- 
ace in Venice than a small private house. I had not 
forgotten my wish for a house apart, even in the queen 
city of the Adriatic, and I pursued it persistently — the 
more so as the apartments proved so large and cheer- 

1st Scory 2nd Story 3 id Story 

N 




Salon I 




*- About soft.-* 

A SMALL HOUSE IN VENICE. 



less. ^' Parva domus viagna quies.'' I found something 
at last on the Calle della Donna Onesta that I hoped 
might be made to do. North again ? no, south this 
time. It was curiously backed up against another house 
at the rear, after a mediaeval fashion, so that the rear 
windows of two of its three chief stories were blocked. 
You would hardly expect the luxury of a dooryard in 
Venice, and there was none, but there was an alley at 
the right, which gave side windows. The rent was very 



FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 327 

low, but forty francs a month, which would allow us 
such a margin for improvements that we might make 
ourselves very comfortable. It was a good, wide, Dutch- 
looking house, of red brick, with stone string courses, 
a door in the middle, entered from the level, and green 
shutters on all the windows. A hundred yards or less 
separated it from the Grand Canal, and there was a 
rather pretty glimpse of it from the corner. It would 
have made a satisfactory water-color, to send home, 
and who of us is free from some small prompting of the 
vanity of wishing to impress others by our actions ? 

This house had absolutely no modern improvements 
— not a trace of one. There was no fireplace in it, but 
the cheap rental would have allowed us to make one 
and pay for plenty of fuel. All water was from a pub- 
lic well in the Campo San Toma, a few blocks away. 
The well was under lock and key most of the day, and 
only between seven and nine a.m. , and three and five 
P.M., could the servants go there, with their clinking 
copper buckets, and gossip around it, and form the tra- 
ditional genre groups. We should have used the well of 
course, from time to time, for the sake of the pictu- 
resqueness; but one of my first steps was to go to the 
office of the water company, at the Traghetto San Bene- 
detto, and see what the good aqiiadotto water, from the 
Brenta, would be put in for. I found the expense was 
not great. Nor would the expense have been great for 
the gas, as its pipes almost passed the door. There is 
a pleasant incongruity in talk of putting in gas and 
water, in Venice, but as romantic things may become 
almost commonplace by too long familiarity, so even 
the commonplace things of life abroad take on a cer- 
tain romance. 



328 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

I would have embellished the ground floor, all one 
large, bare, dampish room, where we never would have 
had to stay, with warm pink color, and some bold, cheap 
hangings. Its pavement was broken red marble. After 
having first been something better, it had been a baker's 
shop, I think, for I discovered an oven at the back. I 
would have put a brass knocker on the green entrance- 
door, something artistic, from over among the makers 
of gondola-fittings, on the other side, and it would have 
been becoming and Venetian to have some lemon yellow 
in the window curtains, by the green shutters. A good 
platform staircase led up to the various stories, and the 
corridor was of a pleasant, country-like width. As the 
kitchen was in the top of the house, we should have 
made our dining-room next it. There were no existing 
traditions as to arrangement, and we could have divided 
up the rooms to suit ourselves. We should have had a 
boat of our own, and kept the oars and awning in the 
vacant entrance story. We should sometimes have 
rowed to the Rialto, which was but a short distance 
away, and brought back our own marketing. There 
was always a great display of provisions at the Rialto, 
and I was told, by an informant of experience, that no- 
where else in the world could one live so cheaply as in 
Venice. The wondrous Archives and the Academy of 
Fine Arts were but a few steps distant; and we had 
only to go to the ferry, close by, to be set down in ten 
minutes by the tram-boats, at the piazza of St. Mark's. 
All the rich opportunities of Venice, in pictures, libra- 
ries, " subjects, " and the cosmopolitan people who came 
there, were near at hand. And in our own house, too, 
''away from the pulling and the hauling," we should 
have enjoyed in an especial manner the great water city 



FLORENCE, SIENA, PERUGIA, AND VENICE 329 

where not even the rattle of a single cab ever breaks 
the silence. 

Well, we did not do it. Would not the baby, D , 

have fallen into the canal before our door? Were the 
bad smells, from the tide in the canals and all the things 
floating in them, really as harmless as their apologists 
maintained ? Would the enervating lassitude of the 
long period of summer heat yield to habit, or, if not, 
what considerable part of our income should we spend 
elsewhere in avoiding it ? And should we escape ** the 
pulling and the hauling," after all? The last I saw of 
our fancied home, I looked back upon a convention of 
bareheaded mothers in Israel and urchins, from the dense 
neighborhood of the School of San Rocco gathered be- 
fore it, and those Roccoco urchins were wrangling in its 
very doorway, over some fish they had just hooked up 
out of our tributary canal. 



CHAPTER XXVII 
SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 

All was duly noted down for final reference — and 
the question settled itself within half a day after leav- 
ing Venice. 

Verona was en route^ and Verona was a charming 
provincial city where I had once passed some time. 
This visit was meant to be one of reminiscence and sen- 
timent, yet there used to be a house there where I fan- 
cied I should like to live, and I went to see it. There 
is now a brisk stir of modern life in the city of Romeo 
and Juliet. The approach to the house, on the hill of 
San Lorenzo, under the white Austrian forts, had been 
cut across meantime by a new railway to Lake Garda, 
and besides, there was no sign now — any more than be- 
fore — that the house was to let. But there was another, 
so quaint and original, so charmingly situated, and, 
with all the rest, so fascinatingly cheap, that it seemed 
hardly possible to hesitate. It was the Palazzina 
Giusti, on an upper terrace of the large garden of the 
same name, which travellers visit, as one of the specta- 
cles of the interesting town. You have only to look in 
Baedeker to learn something of the garden. A mention 
of it has even crept into that rhetorical tale, Guy Liv- 
ingstone. 

"The cypresses in the trim old garden," says the 
book, " soaring skyward till the eyes that follow grow 

330 



SIX MONTHS IN A PALA2ZINA AT VERONA 33 1 

dizzy, — the trees that were green and luxuriant years 
before the world was redeemed." 

There is a stump of one of these cypresses that dates 
back fourteen hundred years, and there are a great 
number of four or five hundred years old. The Palazzina 
dominated a stretch of ancient parterres and statuary, 
and the stairway climbed to it through an alley of the 
venerable cypresses and disappeared in the mouth of an 
enormous head, cut out of the solid rock. On the other 
side, its exit and practical gate for every-day use was 
on a street that had once been a pilgrimage way to 
some holy church, while beyond, close by, passed the old 
brick city wall, with a basis from the time of the Ro- 
mans, and scars upon its battlements from all the con- 
flicts of the Middle Ages. Verona was our walled town 
par excellence^ which went far to still the craving for that 
peculiar sort of gratification. The ruddy notch-battle- 
mented walls, with a quiet green promenade inside, ran 
up hill and down dale in the most taking way, and, quite 
superannuated though they now are, sentry-posts of 
bersaglieri still mount guard by the towers. 

The pavilion seemed even more attractive to me than 
the main palace of the Counts Giusti, below. " Palaz- 
zina " again would sound well at a distance. I asked 
the amiable gardener below if it were habitable. 

Yes, he said, lifting one arm toward it with a compre- 
hensive gesture we were to see him much employ, later, 
as he directed inquiring friends where to find us, the 
widow of a German officer and two daughters had oc- 
cupied it lately, and had only left it because the healthy 
situation had given them such appetites, Signore, such 
an over-florid robustness that they were actually obliged 
to go away in self-defence. 



332 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

This unique credential was hardly necessary, at 
least the house was habitable. 

Returning to our home at Villefranche-sur-Mer, by 
way of Turin and then a pass over the little-travelled 
Alpes Maritimes, it was a whiff o/ the breath of orange 
blossoms, coming up the valley, six or eight miles above 
Ventimiglia, that first gave the new conclusion pause. 
It was the land of Mignon's song once more, and its 
potent charm promised to be but the stronger for the 
brief season of absence. 

The Villa des Amandiers was at its best. The shadow 
of the cliff no longer fell upon the long walk, except in 
a measure most agreeable for shade. The wild flowers 
that had sprung there in the winter had now given 
place to a new series, to iris, narcissus, poppy, prim- 
rose, and crocus. Each kind lasts a long time, for there 
is no sudden forcing out in that climate, by fierce heat, 
and as sudden drying up. Our farmer was grafting 
orange buds on a wild stock. Sometimes, to issue forth 
in the fresh morning, and see the opening blossoms, 
seemed worth far more than all the antiquities of Rome. 
Cherry-time was at hand. We had bought a horse, to 
jog about the pleasant country, and had meant to ex- 
plore, that summer, the small Alpine resorts to which 
many of the well-to-do of Nice retire, as San Dalmazzo, 
Saint-Martin-Lantosque, and Berthemont. The winter 
hardships were all over, and the long, pleasant season 
for dining on our terrace was before us. Why move 
at all ? We summed up Rome, Venice, Florence and 
the rest, and decided that they were places to go to only 
as travellers and we were within easy striking distance 
of them all. 

We decided to remain, only saying that we must seek 



SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 333 

another location for winter, where we could have the 
sun to his very latest ray, which is by no means easy to 
find. But hardly was this decision entirely settled when 
the opposite one was precipitated by an untoward cir- 
cumstance. 

The rift in our lute, the drawback and latent threat 
in our situation, all along, had been the little abode 
that stood vacant on our terrace, opposite our door. 
It was never meant to be occupied except by inmates 
of the large villa, or by some one agreeable to them. 
I had ornamented it as part of our general motif. It 
had had such tenants, I have said, as an artist known 
to fame, a picturesque old abbe, and a young officer of 
chasseurs^ and we were hoping for other such. But, with- 
out warning or redress, the agent suddenly popped into 
a. numerous peasant-like family, to pass the summer. 
It was not the fault of these worthy neighbors if they 
conducted all their domestic operations on the terrace: 
they could hardly do otherwise; there was no room for 
them inside. They used to invite the hostlers and care- 
takers of the Commandant, who had by this time gone 
away with his troop to the mountains, to festivities and 
merriment which would surely have been innocent 
enough could they only have been indulged in half a 
mile away. We could not enter into a competition 
with them in trampling down the grass, for it was ours; 
nor in clamor, nor in casting out vegetable-parings, 
which would very likely have been taken only as a sign 
of pleasant sociability. There was nothing for it but 
to beat a retreat. 

First, I had to get a certificate of change of residence 
from the mayor of our commune, setting forth that I 
would take with me to Verona my household effects, as 



334 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

per a detailed list annexed, that they might not have to 
pay duty. This was next legalized by the name and 
seal of the Italian consul-general at Nice. 

We got up at daybreak, one morning, the villa was 
dismantled, and everything was on board the train by 
eleven o'clock, and our car sealed up with a lead seal. 
It cost about twenty-five dollars for the things, on the 
"car-load" plan, and the transportation took nine days, 
which we passed in a little journey. Thus ended the 
pleasant chapter of life at the Villa des Amandiers. 

Arrived in Verona, I presented myself, with a proper 
sponsor, at the stately city hall, opposite the Roman 
amphitheatre, the grand guardhouse of old Venetian 
rule, and the battlemented gate of the Visconti. I fur- 
nished the mayor's assistant with numerous particulars 
about myself and family, which were duly recorded, 
and we were granted permission to make our domicile 
in Verona. I then proceeded with my papers to the 
custom-house, which was in a suppressed convent, next 
the old brick-and-marble church of San Fermo. I trans- 
lated into Italian in full the list of my effects, swore, 
signed, countersigned, duplicated and reduplicated doc- 
uments, then hurried away for more of the same thing 
at the branch custom-house in the railway station, and 
was finally able to take my goods away from the latter, 
just at the closing hour of three. 

One of the amusing features of the hegira was the 
transformation our name underwent in the various doc- 
uments, of which I have kept a collection. A common 
form of it was "Bisoph," to which I was already well 
used. But generally a family name was not deemed 
necessary, or else it was indistinguishably mixed up 
with the others. Thus I was often " Signor William 



SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 335 

Henry," or simply "William," or, again, " Villiam En- 
rico." One's ancestors enter into the transaction, and, 
having had to give my father's name and my mother's, 
I found the former curiously attached to mine in the 
extreme form of evolution, Signor "Bishop d'Elias. " 
Surely a very pretty distance that from the original — 
with an idea in it for such as are anxious to secure high- 
sounding pedigrees, which would have the sanction of 
official documents. 

I suppose there was hardly ever a greater tugging, 
straining, and swearing, since the hauling of war mate- 
rial to the battlements for those tyrant princes the Sca- 

Via Scala Szxnten C Street) 



Terrace | about 25ft l'^* O 

^v ^. I ' ■ fc . ^ ■■ ■i ll i l 




x^ Main Story Upper ^tory 



THE PALAZZINA GIUSTI. 



ligers or Theodoric the Great, than in getting our two 
bulky drayloads of effects up the steep incline and along 
the secluded grass-grown lane to our gateway. The 
ancient fortifications closed in one side, and garden 
walls, almost as lofty, the other. At one place, there 
even had to be a partial unloading; an old arch, sprung 
across the way at an awkward angle, seemed to bar it 
entirely, and its abutments were passed only by a hair's- 
breadth. 

It was the 24th of July, and though I had been in- 
clined to think this new post of ours, on its bold foot- 



$$6 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

hill, with grand snow mountains in sight over toward 
Lake Garda and in all the views northward, could not 
be warmer than what we had left behind, how hot, how 
very hot it was, with a heat of a totally different quality ! 
We were deposited, with all our belongings, upon our 
large brick terrace, and left to the task of settling the 
house ! Our welcome privacy here was purchased some- 
what at the expense of the refreshing currents of air we 
needed. A very high rear wall was a veritable rever- 
beratory of heat. An awning was soon stretched over 
the terrace, but it was a large space to cover, and the 
awning was always being thrown out of gear, or split 
and carried away by thunderstorms. 

But the delightful prospect should be and almost was 
compensation enough. All Verona, every ruddy tower 
and church spire, was constantly under our eyes, to be 
studied and made familiar at our leisure; all the wind- 
ings of the Adige; all the pretty villages; and, beyond 
them, Mantua and other cities of the plain that, later, 
were to be a theatre for our wanderings. And beneath 
our parapet, as if the principal pasture for our eyes, the 
labyrinths, statues, and parterres of the Giusti garden 
which had brought us there, were not quite enough, a 
part of the immediate foreground was a convent gar- 
den, to which the nuns, in a pretty costume of blue and 
gray, used to come for recreation, and to till the ground, 
and where they used to chatter and make merry like 
a flock of sparrows. 

The lower floor of the Palazzina was comprised all in 
one fine, large room, which was used both as salon and 
dining-room — when we did not dine upon our terrace, 
which I must concede was here but seldom. The 
story above contained a large hall and four rooms, of 



SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 337 

one of which we made a cosey sitting-room and study. 
It had a curious, ancient, goblin-like little iron stove; 
but in winter, this proving insufficient, the proprietor 
replaced it with a prodigious stove of brick and mortar, 
which took six men to bring it up from the palace be- 
low. It was a good deal like moving a chimney. A 
mason spent half a day in plastering up its crevices. 
We had a similar one in the salon, and both of them 
burned wood, at two francs the hundred-weight. 

The kitchen, a small building by itself, was across 
the terrace. It had a very wide Dutch window that 
would have greatly pleased a painter, and into the 
metal grating that protected it all Verona was wrought 
like a pattern of tapestry. The cooking was done here 
by means of crane and tripods, over fagOts, on a broad 
hearth, of precisely the kind at which we see Cinde- 
rella in the picture. Contrary to expectations, house- 
keeper S found much good in these primitive ap- 
pliances, and said that the wood made a readier and 
hotter fire than coal. 

The servant question naturally pressed for immediate 
solution. A stately sort of woman, in Spanish man- 
tilla, who had been employed by the Franceschine nuns 
below, came to seek the place. She was totally inca- 
pable of comprehending that we could not wait for her 
for ten days. What was to become of us in the mean 
time was no affair of hers; the important thing was that 
she wanted the place and would take it in ten days. A 
certain " Giacinta " was then secured to come in by the 
day for the cooking and heavy work. She was a stout, 
smiling, willing girl, faithful according to her lights, 
but easy-going and shiftless to a degree. She had most 
extraordinary equanimity of temper; with her every- 

23 



338 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

thing was always well. The amount of wages seemed 
to give her no concern; no rivalry upset her; no extra 
demands, no tugging of heavy supplies up from the 
market, ever appeared to her inconvenient or inoppor- 
tune. Next, we got for nurse-maid a thin, blonde, 
German-looking girl, from the province of Mantua, 
rather cross-grained and moody, but more efficient than 
the other. Upon her trunk when she came was neatly 
lettered, by some accomplished friend, " La Gentilissima 
SigJiorina Melania So-and-so." Melania's pay was ten 
francs a month with board, and Giacinta's was twenty, 
without. These were the ruling prices; nothing ex- 
ceptional about them except, strange as it may seem, 
they were liberal. We knew of some well-to-do fami- 
lies where there was more work, heavy washing and 
the like, and the pay was less. The ladies of Verona 
like to complain of their servants, as ladies do the world 
over, and it appears that paragons are not produced 
even on this primitive rate of wages. The custom is, 
if .either party be dissatisfied, to give eight days' notice, 
or this may be commuted, on the employer's side, by 
eight days' pay. 

Keeping house again in a new language was a con- 
siderable part of the opening trials; and, as usual, it 
was not even a language we had to deal with, but a dia- 
lect, and two dialects, one for each province repre- 
sented. We were sometimes brought from the market 
sausage for salad, and cheese for ice. Once Melania, 
having had a violent quarrel in the kitchen, came to us 
to hand in her resignation. We were serenely uncon- 
scious of what she said, and she, nonplussed by seeing 
day after day go by without our knowing that she was go- 
ing to leave, seemed to feel driven, in despair, to remain. 



SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 339 

We were rather far from the most advantageous mar- 
keting; that is, from the central market in the Piazza 
delle Erbe, where the quaint medieval surroundings 
seemed all arranged for picturesque effect rather than 
business. But nothing in Verona was dear as compared 
to late experiences. From a few items judge all — ex 
pede Herculem. Eggs were but fifteen sous (cents) a 
dozen, milk was four sous a litre, and the best filet of 
beef three francs a kilo — two and one-fifth pounds — as 
against five francs in France. The meat, which had 
been a constant problem in France, was here always 
tender and good. How forbear grateful recollection of 
the thick, juicy mutton-chops, at less than half the price 
at Nice, even if they could ever have been had at Nice 
at all ? This, again, may be only matter of individual 
experience, but I have never seen elsewhere such de- 
licious mutton. The sheep too were a delight to the 
eye, feeding in pastoral groups on the wide stretch of 
greensward, that continues the glacis of the fortifica- 
tions around the city. A " fixed-price " system was ap- 
plied more or less, even in the market; so that on a 
pile of fine tomatoes you would see a placard with the 
words " two sous a kilo," the same on the potatoes and 
other things; and the fixed price is a great stimulus to 
confidence. 

I have not yet stated the rent of the Palazzina — thirty 
francs a month. What with the expense of moving and 
the rest, it could not be counted at that for the first 
year, but, after a first year, it practically amounted to 
the abolition of rent. With a house and two servants 
complete for sixty francs a month, the problem of liv- 
ing ^ifes about solved. Was not this last word of 
cheapness a more aesthetic and rational plan than even 



340 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

Thoreau's? And what surroundings! You could go 
down to Verona and get books. Besides the excellent 
public library, there was another at a pleasant literary 
club, founded as early as 1808. One was isolated from 
nothing important, either ancient or modern, in this fine 
city, of between sixty and seventy thousand people. In 
the first realization of this, when our preliminary diffi- 
culties were somewhat settled it seemed warrantable to 
exclaim: " O, let us stay here forever! Let us master 
Italian till we speak it as well as they! We will go 
back to America for an occasional visit, but let us roam 
no more; let this be our permanent home! " A grand 
apartment, with frescoes in the style of the old masters, 
could be had, down in a wing of the Giusti palace, if 
one preferred, for about 1,200 francs a year. For what 
would be a very modest scale of expense in America, 
one could here keep horses and live like a sort of Sar- 
danapalus. It was the sound commercial plan of mak- 
ing the most of one's means, by reducing his divisor if 
he cannot increase his dividend. Nothing is more phil- 
osophical than to bring down the cost of the necessi- 
ties of life as low as possible, to have the more for its 
superfluities, out of which our principal pleasures are 
derived. 

It is true that the full enjoyment of the Giusti gar- 
den was not included in our price named; on the con- 
trary, for that we were asked a sum equal to twice and 
a half our house-rent. We arranged a sort of modus 
Vivendi with a great reduction upon this demand ; but the 
question was never entirely settled, and would have been 
open to negotiation, had we stayed. Our doors gave 
eastward upon a fine portico with light stone columns and 
grotesque heads in the keystones of the arches, which 



SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 34I 

laughed down upon us. They had seen worse trials 
than ours, I dare say, in their three hundred years of 
gayety. They had seen, among others, that young 
nobleman who fled from the machinations of Eugene 
Beauharnais, when Napoleon's viceroy in Italy, and 
concealed himself in the cavernous cisterns under our 
terrace, where his food was let down to him by friends, 
through the ancient well-curb. 

The portico gave upon the upper walk of the garden, 
planted mainly in the natural style, in contrast with the 
geometry of Le Notre below. What charming prome- 
nades we had amid the graceful laurels, acacias, and 
sempre-verde of many patterns, in this our principal re- 
treat! How merrily the baby D ■ used to run round 

the catalpa tree just before the door, to warm his blood, 
on the frosty autumn mornings! How warily would he 
shun the edge of the precipice guarded by a hedge of 
May roses! And how truly, then lisping his first ac- 
cents of speech, in a foreign tongue, he summed up 
the winsome prospect in his constant " Guar da che bella ! " 
— see, how lovely ! 

I cannot say just how old the Palazzina was,' but I 
had one of those marriage-books such as are still 
printed in Italy, which commemorated the marriage of a 
Count Giusti, in the year 1620, and this gave a little 
account of it. It was in the form of a dialogue be- 
tween a stranger, Forestiero^ and a citizen, Cittadino^ 
who had undertaken to show the former the property 
of a cavalier " esteemed the glory of the nobility and the 
pattern of every grace and virtue. " After having visited 
the palace and main part of the gardens, they arrive at 
the upper level. 

" Forestiero. Is it not drawing near time to return ? 



342 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

" Cittadino. First let us look at the delights of the 
palazzina. . . . Here flourishes a second garden. . . . 
Yonder figs are of such look and flavor that one would 
take them rather for ambrosia of the gods than mortal 
fruits. Here are the fragrant salvia, the cooling mint, 
the valued rosemary, as well also as the cinara, either 
neglected by the ancients or unknown to them. . . . 
And now let us enjoy the grand prospect from the pa- 
lazzina itself. 

" Forestiero. Fine chambers these, truly ; wondrously 
provided with every ornament and comfort. But what 
well is this I see on the inner terrace? How can water 
ever be raised to such a height? 

" Cittadino. This entire terrace is vaulted beneath, 
so as to hold a great supply of rain-water, which is dis- 
tributed at will to the fountains below. So fair and 
dainty are they, that they disdain to receive water 
from any other source than, in this way, from heaven 
direct. 

" Forestiero. This height is certainly nothing less 
than Mount Pindar. Here laurel abounds on every 
side, and the Muses sport with Apollo. The flowers 
parallel the stars of heaven, except that they have the 
great advantage of being of a thousand colors, while 
the stars are but of one. . . . Oh, happy he, who, far 
from care, may breathe this excellent air, and, 'neath 
this time-honored shade, go quietly weaving his verse, 
in which apt rhym.es and noble thought must sure be 
worthy of the scene around ! " 

Why then did we not stay ? Why are we not still at 
the Palazzina Giusti ? I fear I can give but insufficient 
reasons. The novelty of such an experience somewhat 
wears off in time; there are moods in which you would 



SIX MONTHS IN A PALAZZINA AT VERONA 343 

scarce look more at the rich Byzantine-Gothic churches 
of San Zeno or Santa Anastasia than some backwoods 
meeting-house. We were high and secure above all the 
outer world, but the deserted streets by which we as- 
cended ran in part through a poor quarter and were 
often neglected and malodorous. The municipality 
would send and clean them at times, but did not seem 
able to keep it up. If one should persist in an old- 
fashioned New England squeamishness, of course he 
could not travel in Europe at all, but, even so, he must 
draw the line somewhere. 

Then, I shall have to speak of climate again, — end- 
less gossip de la pluie et du bean teinps^ perhaps you will 
say. At first it was hot, hot, suffocating, unendurable. 
We were even alarmed at the uncompromising fierceness 
of the heat, and went away and passed most of the 
month of August at Bosco Chiesanuova. It was a 
mountain village devoid of most all conveniences, but 
amusing in a certain way, and beginning to be a sum- 
mer-resort for a few residents of Verona who felt the 
need of any such thing. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 
WOULD YOU SUMMER AT BOSCO CHIESANUOVA ? 

But let me dwell a moment upon this same Bosco 
Chiesanuova. 

It was an amusing little place in spite of itself. 
The inns defied all ideas of modern comfort, furnished 
a. cm'si7ie consisting entirely of veal in various forms, and 
this served in a half-bedlamite way ; and yet entertained 
some distinguished guests. One lady, wife of a leading 
Italian general, went away with her husband presently 
to pay a visit to the royal family at Monza, and yet 
while here showed no evidence of discontent with the 
primitive accommodations. All was taken with a happy- 
go-lucky ease or dignified apathy, as if it were either 
of no consequence or of no use to complain. She had 
a palace down at Verona, with armed guards pacing 
before it, but here the shabby little albergo seemed to 
do just as well. There was a duchess, who occupied 
for the summer a large, barn-like stone house, into 
which she had not put a single ornament, not a single 
bright touch of drapery. She had some rooms to rent 
in another house, and we were recommended to look 
at them, if not satisfied with our own, but these were 
positively squalid and repulsive. If such be the 
character of Italian duchesses, improvement in certain 
directions is much to be desired. 

On the same duchess's terrace, however, was given 
344 



WOULD YOU SUMMER AT BOSCO CHIESANUOVA ? 345 

one evening a very pretty fete. Garlands of greenery 
with lanterns on light poles were hung in a complete 
circle around a magnificent old tree. A long table be- 
neath glittered with all sorts of knick-knacks, prepared 
for a tombola by young women of the house and a gay 
group of girls over from the hotels. You drew numbers 
and got absurd prizes, and the young women laughed, 
romped, and danced, always under the eye of their 
chaperons, in the merriest fashion. 

They used to dance, too, in a vacant dining-room of 
the hotel and play another sort of tombola^ and also 
Mercante al Feria^ which is our game of Auction Pitch. 
It was half like being in America again. 

We were at Tinazzi's inn. Tinazzi was a character; 
and if he were the only one in the place, I would de- 
scribe him in full, but perhaps it would be unfair dis- 
crimination. He put us in, at first, a bill of the kind 
that takes your breath away, but, when we protested, 
at once wheeled round to the other side. Calling up 
Mrs. Tinazzi, who had undoubtedly made it out under 
his own direction — 

"These are altri prezzi — other prices — "he cried; 
"it's all sbagliato — all mixed up. These are other 
prices ; do you understand ? What do you mean by it ? " 

He even turned upon me an indignant glance. " Great 
heavens!" it seemed to say, "you don't suppose I ever 
meant you. to pay any such prices as these, do you?" 
One would have thought some interloper had got in and 
mysteriously made the bill unknown to him. Tinazzi 
repudiated it utterly, and I did not have to pay more than 
a third of the amount originally demanded. 

The bells used to ring with an infernal din, half an 
hour at a stretch and many times a day. There seemed 



346 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

to be always a fete or a church service. The natives 
delighted in it about as savages would delight in the 
beating of their tom-toms. It could be heard for miles 
away in the secluded valleys, and it was probably a 
satisfaction to them that the neighbors knew something 
was going on there. 

It had just one redeeming feature, but a great one. 
A lovely young countess used to come to some of the 
services, a slight distraction for her in the absence of 
others. She passed by with an undulating, goddess-like 
tread, " bodiced like a lily," tasteful and fresh in her 
attire as a flower after rain. Sometimes she would 
walk with her father, again with a group of younger 
men, some clad in remarkable plaids, and one in Tyro- 
lean feathers and leggings, but all a thousand miles 
from herself in distinction. You could hardly help 
weaving romances about her. What would be the fate 
of this beautiful girl ? Should she marry into even 
royal station, it would seem no more than her right, 
and she could find but few rivals there. 

Such a waist! such a figure! such coloring! and such 
gracious manners! It was the kind of figure to wear 
a jersey; do I make my meaning clear ? and yet in every 
line and movement slenderness, suppleness, grace, 
youth, innocence itself. That combination of physical 
roundness with the other distinctive charms of early 
youth is rarer among American and English than Con- 
tinental women, and it is so rare everywhere that when 
a type of perfection is found, is it not fair to make a 
note of it ? 

She was not, it proved, a mere product of village op- 
portunities, a rustic prodigy who had outstripped her 
homely sisters. Rome and Turin had given her her 



WOULD YOU SUMMER AT BOSCO CHIESANUOVA ? 347 

education, and court life would be her sphere of activity, 
if indeed she had not already begun it. Her family 
were there because it was their ancestral home and 
hunting-ground. Not that any castle or manor house 
of theirs remained; all had been swept away in the 
wars, nobody knows when, and the delicious pine groves 
and Alpine pastures were as innocent of anything of 
that kind as if it had been the Rocky Mountains. They 
were building a fine new one, with plenty of armorial 
shields upon it. They had been reduced to poverty 
during the Austrian domination. One of them, to 
gain his bread, had even held office under the hated 
oppressor, at Venice. But his son, the father of this 
blooming young Hebe, would have no share in such a 
mean-spirited subserviency. In the wisdom of his 
youth and ardent patriotism, he ran away from home, 
and took service in the revolutionary movements under 
the King of Sardinia. His uncalculating devotion 
was well rewarded, for, finally besides military pro- 
motion, he won the hand of a rich and handsome 
widow. 

Would you know how she became a rich woman ? It 
was an almost miraculous accident; there are lucky 
people in the world after all. It has an American 
touch, too. Her husband had manufactured cotton, 
and just before the outbreak of our Civil War, one of 
his clerks, by an error in an English letter, ordered him 
10,000 bales of cotton, instead of i,ooo. There was 
an enormous rise in price at once, and a fortune was 
made. 

The Count — I would like to mention his name, but 
I don't see how I can after describing his daughter, 
almost indefensibly, I fear, — went into literature and 



348 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROIE 

wrote plays, which abound in sprightliness and humor. 
Some of them still hold the boards. 

But he went also into politics, and became a deputy, 
of the conservative party. His literary style is so good 
that it is said he is chosen in parliament to prepare 
the addresses to the throne which it is desired to have 
particularly smooth. He represents his native moun- 
tain district, loads his constituents with favors, and has 
come back to make his summer home among them. 
His brother-in-law had also come, another titled rich 
man and member of parliament, and was building too. 
These were the nucleus that was drawing some atten- 
tion to a hitherto obscure little village and may in time 
result in making this refuge from the blazing heats of 
Lombardy well-known. 

Possibly the most charming glimpse of the divinity 
of the place was that we had on the morning of our final 
departure. Our cool, delightful drive down the pass, 
among the chestnut groves, had begun. We met her 
walking on the road, a comvie il faut carriage following 
close behind her. She wore a warm-colored gown which 
flamed in union with her rich flush of color. A beauty, 
yes, a veritable goddess-like person, without the slight- 
est doubt about it. She bowed very gently and sweetly, 
like the young chatelaine of the district who extended 
her graciousness even to strangers. That flower-like 
vision alone, in the greenery of the mountains, was 
enough to glorify them in memory. 

At Verona, later, she played in theatricals, with a 
spirit and talent equal to her beauty, in a piece of her 
father's composing, in which he also took part. Do 
you not like to hear about natural, unoperatic Italians 
for once? for they so rarely get into books. 



WOULD YOU SUMMER AT BOSCO CHIESANUOVA ? 349 

For what is best in Italian feminine character, Queen 
Margherita of Savoy is a potent influence, and probably 
counted for something in the girl described above. It 
was possibly a reflection of her gracious royal smile we 
saw among the green hills of- the Venetian Alps. It is 
not necessary to have passed the splendid, mammoth 
cuirassiers who guard the door of the Quirinal at Rome 
and penetrated to the court ceremonies to undergo this 
influence. No lesson is so efficient as that set forth by 
a distinguished pattern, and fashion, regal prestige, 
patriotism, and hearty personal esteem and liking all 
combine to make Italian women imitate their queen. 
She is a woman who can talk to scientists, men of let- 
ters, musicians, painters, and all sorts of foreigners, in 
their own language; she sympathizes with all worthy 
objects in her kingdom; and she bears herself with an 
amiable dignity as free from affectation as weakness. 
If one were going to be a sovereign it would seem as if 
this were exactly the ideal way to act. Yet I still hear 
the clamor of a discussion that once broke out between 
our " Giacinta" and " Melania. " 

"She is not beautiful, not even good looking," main- 
tained the former. "When you come to beauty it isn't 
there; you have got to go somewhere else and look for 
it." 

"I say she is," cried Melania; "she is an angel be- 
yond compare." 

"No," persisted Giacinta, waving a negative fore- 
finger in the air, with a derisive smile. 

" Then I say you are not a good and proper Italian," 
cried Melania, in a rage. 

We sometimes suspected Giacinta of talking only to 
enrage this companion, but then, too, we thought she 



350 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

had heard some socialistic opinions from working-- 
men, . members of her family, and really harbored 
the view — I give it as a sign of the times — that kings 
and queens are a useless lot whose days are nearly 
numbered. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

SOME ITALIAN HOUSEKEEPERS, AND CONCLUSION 
AT NICE 

The other young girls, the gay dancing ones, at the 
hotel, complained that, on returning to Verona, their 
jolly times would all be over, and a dull, serious life 
was before them. The sort of thing they had done was 
winked at in the country, but, once back in town, a 
mild walking up and down in couples at the military 
music, in the Piazza, constituted about their only gayety. 
In the city of Juliet and of merry Capulet — who used to 
cry "What ho, more lights! bid the musicians play!" 
— though it is a city of 70,000 people, with a large, 
brilliantly uniformed garrison, nobody entertains. The 
natural result is a good deal of conventional dulness 
and want of vivacity among the women. Nearly the 
same description applies to all but the very largest 
Italian cities. 

The women are more easily adaptable to new condi- 
tions than those of Spain, but they have a large degree 
of the same sort of rigidity to overcome. The Italian 
woman is domestic, humdrum, contented with a little 
— perhaps contented with almost too little. I have al- 
ready shown that I do not include everybody, I speak 
of the mass, the great rank and file. Of course, a dash- 
ing, ultra-fashionable few have acquired the fast cos- 
mopolitan tone, and no man can ever be quite as cos- 
mopolitan as that sort of a woman. There are Italian 

351 



I 



352 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

women who adopt Anglomaniac vagaries, who sail in 
their own yachts, or their friends', who smoke, flirt out- 
rageously, play deeply at Monte Carlo, and pass their 
lives going on from one to another of the regular 
European pleasure resorts. A few such individuals 
really represent no nationality at all; take away the 
difference in language and you could not tell the Italian 
from the Frenchman, Russian, Englishman or American. 

You generally expect Italian women to be brunettes, 
but what a variety of types you really see! even what a 
lot of red heads you run across.^ I don't think I ever 
saw a more pronounced pair than the brother and sis- 
ter, or young clerk and his sweetheart, who climbed 
with me one hot summer day to the top of Milan cathe- 
dral. The sister, or sweetheart, wore a mantilla, Span- 
ish fashion, over her red hair, which gleamed in a 
charming, burnished way through its black meshes. 
Shakespeare understood this and was true to the local 
types, even in his day. You will find in "The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona," that he makes Julia say of 
Sylvia, of Milan: 

" Her hair is auburn; mine is perfect yellow." 

Your modern playwright, nine chances out of ten, 
makes all his Italian heroines as dark as night. 

The lace mantilla, so especially pretty on blonde and 
auburn heads, is, as in Spanish countries, fast being 
relegated to the poorer and working classes. 

Italian housekeeping is apt to be simple; a Spartan 
frugality is often found where something like luxury 
would have been expected. It argues something lenient 
and large-minded in the character of the men who put 
up with it, or perhaps it is a general native temperance 
and economy. Owing to this cause and lack of the 



ITALIAN HOUSEKEEPERS CONCLUSION AT NICE 353 

habit of entertaining at home, the women have a great 
deal of time on their hands, which they are fond of em- 
ploying in dress. They dress very well. Nothing of 
the classic feeling of the Romans, their ancestors, has 
descended upon them in this respect: they aim to 
conform, at the cafe or on the promenade, as closely as 
possible to the latest fashion plates. 

The scenes at the cafes are very bright and pretty. 
It would be hard to see anything brighter, for instance, 
than the groups of pretty women and their acquaint- 
ance taking ices, under the electric lights, at the Cafe 
Nazionale, on the Corso at Rome, or Florian's, in the 
Piazza San Marco, at Venice, or even in the Piazza Vit- 
torio Emmanuele at Verona. But don't be deceived; 
there is a good deal of hollowness about it; it's some- 
thing of a mockery. Always the same monotonous chit- 
chat, the same post and position kept all the evening, 
and in the groups always the same few persons, mainly 
members of the family. I doubt not m.any a heavy sigh 
is heaved by feminine bosoms, longing for something 
more engrossing, some influx of the fresh and stimulat- 
ing outside world. 

When mellow autumn came on, which was just as 
lovely as in America, we walked our garden paths with 
unmixed pleasure, and promised ourselves ample atone- 
ment for the past. In the property of the Frances- 
chine, every little fruit-tree seemed of pure gold, the 
thin vines on the trellises were all of gold, and it is as- 
tonishing what subjects for a painter they were, those 
nuns, in their white caps and grayish blue gowns, ram- 
bling about amid the yellow tracery. At that season, 
too, we did our chief excursioning. Another reason 
why the first year could not have been very cheap is that 
23 



354 ^ HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

we were forever going off on expeditions. To Venice, 
of course ; then to Mantua, the city of " the lean apothe- 
cary;" Palladio's Vicenza, where also, I should think, 
one might live charmingly, on the lines here indicated; 
the brilliant old battlefields of Rivoli and Arcole, and 
the sad modern one of Custoza ; and Lake Garda, with 
its taste of an Austrian town, over the border, at Riva. 
It is no very long railway ride southward to Parma or 
northward to Innspruck and into Germany, all of which 
should be counted to the advantage of Verona. 

Our fires were lighted in October, and were burning 
plenty of wood by the end of the month. Mists now 
constantly began to rise from the plain and veil the dis- 
tance ; an occasional London fog even hid the garden, 
and we could not see five feet from our windows. On 
Thanksgiving Day there was a light fall of snow, and 
the next day an old-fashioned snowstorm. If in the 
evening we ventured down to the theatre or the cafes, 
on our return homeward, the wind was bitterly piercing. 
The Bersaglieri at the tower by our gate regularly chal- 
lenged us. 

" Who goes there ? " the sentry v/ould cry. 

" A/m'd/" — Friends! we would reply, in the style of 
the penny-dreadful novel. 

It was not reasonable in them to think we could cap- 
ture their town, with its garrison of six thousand men, 
so they must have done this chiefly to relieve the mo- 
notony of guard mounting. 

Once, when alone, I replied to the hail simply " Amico " 
— Friend, but that would not do at all. ^''Amici!'' 
was the password and*M;;wVr' they would have, and 
I found that it did not do to imperil personal safety for 
the sake of grammatical correctness. 



ITALIAN HOUSEKEEPERS CONCLUSION AT NICE 355 

The middle of December a hard winter set in, — a 
winter of the Russian or Canadian sort, such, we were 
told, as had not happened before for forty years. Our 
water-pipes froze up, and remained frozen. The snow 
put caps and mantles like ermine on the old statuary; 
it lay deep on the steps of the Roman arena, on the 
roofs and barges along the river, and in continuous 
ridges by the horse-car tracks, the whole giving the 
town a crude, shrunken appearance. The Palazzina 
Giusti, which had first been untenable on account of 
the heat, now became untenable on account of the cold. 
When we left it, that terrace which had once been al- 
most an inferno was hidden under Siberian heaps of 
snow, broken only by the paths shovelled for the re- 
moval of our furniture. 

The fact is that the longing for Nice had much to do 
with this impatience of hardships, which otherwise should 
have had nothing very formidable about them for 
Americans. We returned to Nice proper. As all the 
earlier journeys had pointed toward that goal so all the 
later ones seemed to point back to it. It was just the eve 
of Christmas when we reached it, and a day of warm sun- 
shine and unclouded blue in sky and sea. The con- 
tentment and comfort it was, after all the recent 
inclemencies, to go about without a greatcoat, and 
dry-shod, and to breathe again the fragrance of the 
oranges and roses filling the gardens, I shall never 
forget. Indeed, I count that pleasurable violent con- 
trast, that miracle, as one of the most memorable things 
in my lifetime. Whenever I think of it, it is with a grati- 
tude that overcomes the memory of a host of incon- 
veniences. 

I shall not go into detail here about Nice proper. 



356 A HOUSE-HUNTER IN EUROPE 

We have lived in various ways — first, in pretty apart- 
ments with charming views of the sea which we endeav- 
ored to make take the place of a garden, and finally 
in a rather stately old house which, with some increase 
in expense, combines something of the city and country 
both. In our time, we have thrice seen rents generally 
advanced, while recent tariff legislation, and notably 
the economic duel with Italy, have raised the cost of 
provisions, so that some of the figures I have given for 
the Riviera are already passing into history. 

The chief defect in our experiment has already been 
hinted at. Your cheap habitation, no matter how ex- 
cellent, artistic, and original in itself, must always throw 
you into pretty close relations with persons quite able to 
pay the same low rents, who will have very different 
ways of living, and these will be very likely to bring 
your own to naught. The trial is well worth making, 
all the same, but nobody can expect to fly in the face 
of political economy, and wholly escape, sometimes, 
the consciousness that " every prospect pleases, and only 
man is vile." 

Nice has become considerably nearer the outer world 
than it was a little time since. A good line of steamers 
has been put on, to Genoa, and now to run over from 
New York to the Riviera direct is quite a simple matter. 
We hardly know whether this should be taken as an 
added inducement to go, or only to remain with the 
yet greater comfort of mind, since it has become so 
easy to go if one like to. 



THE END. 



INDEX 



Adam, Madame Juliette, 38, 

42-43 

Affreville, 117 

Ajaccio, 279, 281, 28?, 284, 289-91 

Alassio, 215 

Albano, 305 
Lake, 306 

Alban Mts., the, 305 

Alecsandri, 100 

Algeria, 109-19 

climate of, 11 7-1 8 
voyage to, 109; from, 120 

Algiers, the city of, 109-16, 118 

Alhambra, the, 125-26 

Aljessur, the Count, 273 

Alpine chasseurs, the French, 263- 
64 

American chromos in Algiers, T17 
farmer near Blidah, an, 117 
fleet at Villefranche-sur-Mer, 

227 
insurance companies in Ma- 
drid, 150, 153 

American's library, an, at Rome, 
309 

American travellers in France, so- 
cial reception of, 32-34 

Ampotiza, 133 

Andalusia, 120, 139, 142 

Angouleme, 206 

Antibes, 238 



Arabic, or Moorish, strain in 
Spanish women, 139 
or Moorish, strain in habita- 
tions at Aries, 91 
or Moorish, strain \n patois of 

the Riviera, 233 
or Moorish, strain in Brazil- 
ian name, 273 
Arcachon, 206 
Arc de Triomphe, at Paris, 152; 

quarter of the, 15 
Arch of Charles III. at Madrid, 

152 
Architectural felicities at Salaman- 
ca, 176, 178-79, 191 
Architecture at Madrid, the Dutch 
influence in, 152 
at Madrid, modern, 149-53, 

313 

modern at Rome, 313 

of Chirruguera, 177 
Arene, Paul, 100 
Argamasilla, 149 
Ariccia, 305, 306 
Aries, 91 

the Lion of, 102 
Armorial escutcheons, happy ef- 
fect of in Spanish buildings, 1 78- 

79 
Atlas Mts., the, 117 
Aubanel, 96 



358 



INDEX 



Avignon, 85-104 

the Bridge of, 93, 95 
houses and prices at, 87-91 
the Felibres, or Troubadours 
at, 93-105 

Avila, 147 

Avranches, 4, 206 

" Bachelor of Salamanca," the, 

Le Sage's, 184 

of Salamanca, the degree of, 

184 

" Balmoral, the Countess of," 263 

Bandits, still remaining in Corsica, 

288 
Bankruptcy law, rigors of the, 

281 
Baroncelli Javon, Folco de, loi, 

105 
Bastia, 281-84 
Baths of Ledesma, 180 
of Lucca, 287 
of Marmolejo, 164 
Bayonne, 206 

Bazan, Emilia Pardo, 146, 156 
Beaulieu, near Nice, 218, 269 
Bedford Park, London, 300 
Beds, disguised in closets, 4, 

21 
Bellacoscia, the bandits, 288 
Beni Mered, 117 
Bennet, Dr., on Algerian climate, 

118 
"Bentzon's, Th.," literary opinion 

of Frenchmen, 35-36 
Berthemont, 332 
Biarritz, 204 
Blanc, Madame (" Th. Bentzon "), 

35, 36 



Blavet, Alcide, 98 

Blidah, houses and prices at, 116 

an American farmer near, 117 
Blois, the Chateau of, 207 

houses and prices at, 207-08 
Bocognano, 288 
Bonaparte Wyse, 100 
Bonaparte family, the, at Rueil, 

62; at Ajaccio, 289-91 
Bordeaux, 206 
Borgo, Corsica, 284 
Bosco Chiesanuova, 344-48 
Boswell, James, his journey in 

Corsica, 283-84 
Bou Farik, 117 
Boulanger, General, 45, 122 
Bourg-la-Reine, houses and prices 

at, 59, 63 
Bourget, Paul, 35 
Bouzarea, 1 13-14 
Brazil, the deposed Emperor of, 

271-78 
Brittany, peculiarities of, 3, 8-9 
Brownings' palace at Venice, the, 

321 
Buildings, a legacy to Paris from 

international expositions, 56 
Building-sites on the Riviera, 218, 

237 
Bull-fighting at Madrid, 169, 171- 

73 
the humane Portuguese meth- 
od of, 169 

Cabbe Roquebrune, 251-58 

Roquebrune, the legendary 

landslide at, 251 
Roquebrune, the Passion-Play 

at, 251-58 



INDEX 



359 



Cable tramway at Lyons, 84 
Calderon estate, at Granada, the, 

126-27 
"Calendau," Mistral's, 103 
Calvi, 284 
Campagna of Rome, the, 304-05, 

309 

Campidoglioat Rome, the, 314 

Campillo de Arenas, 134 

Cancale, 6 

Cannes, 107, 244, 272, 278 

Canterbury, houses and prices at, 
293-94 

Capri, 318 

Captain, or Capoulie, of the Feli- 
bres, 99 

Cardo, Corsica, 282 

" Carmen Sylva," 100 

Caroube, or sweet locust, the, 232 

Casbah, the, 11 1 

Casone at Ajaccio, the, 289 

Castagniccia or Chestnut Country, 
the, 286, 289 

Castel Gandolfo, a house and gar- 
den at, 306 

Catania, 316 

Ceremonial, formal, remaining un- 
der the French Republic, 31 

Champ de Mars, 44-46 

Champfleury, Jules, 69-71 

Changing of domicile from France 
to Italy, 333-35 

Chardin, the Chevalier, 216 

Chateau Neuf, 238 

Chateau of Blois, 207 

Chateaux, of Henri IV., at Pau, 
205; Francis I., at St. Germain, 
63; La Conninais and La Ga- 
raye, 8; in Paris, 18, 36 



Cheapness, the last word of, 339- 

40 
Cherbourg, 3-4 
Chestnut flour, 286 
Chirruguera, 177 
Choubersky stove, the, 28-29 
Cigale, la, the society of. 

lOI 

Cimiez, 319 
Civita Vecchia, 304 
Collecting, the passion for an- 
alyzed, 69-71 
College de France, lectures at the, 

30 
" Colomba," Merimee's, 282, 288- 

89 
Colonies, stranger, on the Conti- 
nent, 5, 32, 205, 303, 316, 
318, 321 
stranger, literary and artistic 
origin of thj, 7-8 
Commandant, a French, and his 

family, 230, 235, 292 
Complaints, or r e'c lam at ion s, 
against large corporations, in 
France, 212 
Concarneau, 4 
Concierge system, the, 17, 87, 153, 

311 
" Contes Proven^aux,'' Rouma- 

nille's, 96 
Convent of the Sacred Heart, 
Paris, 36 
of the Franceschini, Verona, 

336, 353 
education for French women, 
36 
Coppee, Francois, 100 
Cordova, 138-40 



360 



INDEX 



Corsica, visible from Nice, 279; 
voyage to, 280-81; building in, 
281-82 ; Boswell in, 283-84; ves- 
tiges of Paoli in, 283-86; the 
chestnut country of, 285, 286; 
the people of, 287; bandits in, 
282, 288; vestiges of the Bona- 
partes in, 289, 290-91 ; climate of, 
290; retired pensioners in, 283; 
authoritative character of inhab- 
itants, 282-83 

Corte, 284, 286-87 

Cortes of Spain, aspect of , 169-71 

Cours Grandval, the, 289 

Coutances, 206 

Da Fonseca, President, 275-76 

Darro, the, 100, 127, 154 

Daudet, Alphonse, 31, 101-02, 157 

De Alencar, Joze, 274 

De Amicis, 150 

Debts, a new Spanish plan for 

collecting, 160 
Deschanel, Professor, 30 
D'Eu, the Countess, 272 
Diligencia, or stage-coach, a 

Spanish, 129-30 
Dinan, mediaeval remains at, 6-7; 

English colony at, 7-8; houses 

and prices at, 9-10 
Dinard, 5 
Domicile, changing a, from France 

to Italy, formalities of, 333-35 
Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, 

271-78 
" Don Orsino," Crawford's, 307 
" Dona Perfecta," Galdos', 160 
Driver, a Spanish stage-coach, 132 
Drivers, travellers', 312 



Durance, the, loi 

Ecclesiastical treasures in 
Spain, 194 

Ecouen, houses and prices at, 58 

Eiffel Tower, the, 51-53 

Eighteenth Century, revival of in- 
terest in, 44, 55 

El Affroun, 117 

Elba, 280-83 

Elevators, or lifts, scarcity of in 
foreign houses, 15 

Elysee, the Palace of the, 31 

Emperor of Brazil, the, 272-78 

Empress Theresa, the, 272 

English colonies on the Continent, 
5, 32, 205, 303, 316, 318, 
321 

Escorial, palace of the, 152, 174 
village of, a house in the, 

174-75 
Espeluy, 129, 136 
Esperabe, Don Mames, 184 
Esquiline at Rome, the, 312 
Eugenie, the Empress, 286, 289 
Exposition, Paris, of 1889, the, 
44-57 ; political aspects of, 
45) 55-56 ; noble simplicity of 
unfurnished buildings of, 48- 
49, 50, 56-57 ; sketchy charm 
of in uncompleted state, 47, 
49-51 ; workmen at, 47, 52 ; 
ingenious system of tempo- 
rary sculpture, 53 ; the private 
initiative at, 56 ; site of on mil- 
itary ground, 46 
Expositions, International, plans 

of compared, 49 
Eza, 238 



INDEX 



361 



" Fa'Ience Violin," the, Champ- 

fleury's, 68-82 
Farandole, the, 94 
Farmer of the Riviera, a peasant, 

and his family, 220, 231-33, 332 
Felibres, the, 86, 83, 98, 105 
Felibrige, the movement of the, 

86, 99, loi 
Femme de manage, or day-servant 

system, the, 12, 23-25, 26, 233 
Ferry, Jules, 55 
Fesch, Cardinal, 289 
Feyen-Perrin, 6 
Fiesole, 319 
Florence, influence of the Italian 

Court at, 317 ; English influence 

at, 318; houses and prices at, 

318-19 
Flowers and flower-culture in the 

Riviera, 229, 232, 332 
Fontenay-aux-roses, 59 
Fournisseurs, or purveyors of 

daily provisions, 25, 234-35 
Fragonard, his pictures at Grasse, 
264 
the Boulevard du, 264 
Franceschini, convent of the,, at 

Vdrona, 336, 353 
Franceschini, Pietri, 286 
Frascati, 305 

Frenchmen, opinions concern- 
ing, 35 
" Friends of the Trees, the," 236 
Furnishing, an "Impressionist" 

theory of, 22 
Furniture, picking up antique, 9, 
22-23 
transportation of, by land and 
sea, 210-13, 229, 334 



Galdos, Perez, 157 
Gambling at Monte Carlo, sophis- 
tical defence of, a, 249 
at the Passion-play of Cabbe 
Roquebrune, 253 
Garden, the Giusti, 331, 340-43 
Gardens, drawbacks of the modest 

sort, 59, 217 
"General," the English servant 

thus called, 298 
Getarfe, 149 
Gif, the Abbey of, a garden fete 

at, 42-43 
Gil Gon9alez de Avila, 179, 173 
Giusti, the palace and garden, 330- 
31, 336, 340, 341 
Palazzina, the, 330, 335-43, 

349. 353-55 

Golo, the, 284-85 

Goncourts', the, study of Frago- 
nard, 264 

Granada^ houses and prices at, 
127-28; hotels, 121; color, 122; 
the novios, or lovers, 122; the 
public garden, 124; late hours, 
122; newspapers, 122; a relig- 
ious procession, 123; tombs of 
Spanish sovereigns, 123-24; the 
gypsies and their rock-cut dwell- 
ings, 124-25; the Alhambra, 
125; a senator from, 155 

Grand Canal at Venice, the, grow- 
ing commercial character of , 326 

Grasse, the town, 259-68; the 
Queen's visit, 259-71; manufac- 
tories of perfumery and fruit 
drying at, 268-69; the Baroness 
de Rothschild, 269-71 ; the 
Counts of Grasse, 271 



362 



INDEX 



Gras, Felix, 98 

" Greville, Henri " (Madame Du- 

rand), 40 
" Guacho," De Alencar's, 274 
Guadalquivir, the, 140 
" Guarany," De Alencar's, 274 
Gypsies of Granada, the, 124-25 

Half-stories in Venetian pal- 
aces, 325 
Hampstead Heath, 301 
Hannibal at Salamanca, 190-91 
Heating, systems in winter use, 

28-29, 237, 310, 324, 327, 334 
Hennessy, the painter, 64 
House, a small, at Venice, 326-27 
House of Napoleon at Ajaccio, 290 
of the Gaffori at Corte, 290 
of Paoli at Morosaglia, 286 
House-agents, 88, 198, 293, 295, 

296, 299 
House-furnishing, a simplified 

theory of, 22 
Housekeeping, difficulties in, due 
to the ipea.sa.nts' _pa^ois, 13, 338 
Houses in Corsican villages, ex- 
traordinary heights of, 281 
English, nomenclature of mi- 
nor, 298, 300 
notable, at Salamanca: house 
of Cervantes, 180 ; of St. 
Theresa, 180 ; of Dona Ma- 
ria la Brava, 181 ; of the 
Shells, 179 
Houses and prices at Cherbourg, 
St. Malo, Trouville, Dinan, Ver- 
sailles, Paris, Ecouen, Bourg-la- 
Reine, Sceaux, St. Mande, St. 
Maur, Nanterre, Rueil, St. Ger- 



main, Nevers, Avignon, Les 
Baux, Aries, Villefranche-sur- 
Mer, Algiers, St. Eugene, Bli- 
dah, Granada, Seville, Madrid, 
Escorial, Salamanca, St. Jean 
de Luz, Biarritz, Pau, Tours, 
Orleans, Blois, the Superga, in 
Corsica, at Canterbury, Oxford, 
Windsor, London (see under re- 
spective heads) 
Hugues, Clovis, 100 

Ice, economic results of dispens- 
ing with, 27 

Invalides, the quarter of the, 17-18 

Irish College of Philip II., at Sala- 
manca, the, 187 

Irving, Washington, 126 

Isaacs, Jorge, 168 

Italian Court, the effect of on 
Rome, 307 ; on Florence, 

317 
summer resort, an, 343-48 
women, 346-53 
women, blonde types of, 352 
housekeeping, temperance and 

frugality of, 352 
Italy, the Riviera the true, 319 
winter climate of southern, 

316 
rejuvenated, 304 

JABALCUZ, the Springs of, 135 
Jaen, a stage-coach ride to, 129-35 

the old town of, 135-36 
Jeannel, Dr., 236 
Joinville-le-Pont, 60 

Kabyle dm^ellings, 114 



INDEX 



363 



La Conninais, the Chateau of, 8 

La Farlede, 107 

La Garaye, the Chateau of, 107 

La Mancha, 149 

La Nation, attack on Monte Carlo 

by, 239, 243 
"Lady of the Aristook," the, 

Howells', 156 
Lagartijo, 169, 171-72 
Laimber, Juliette, the Rue, 42 
" Land of Thirst," the, iii 
Language, practical difficulties in, 

with the lower class, 13, 233, 

338 
Langue d'Oc, the, 99-100 
Latin Quarter, the, 16, 293 
Latin races, proposed alliance of 

the, 99 
Les Baux, house at, 91 
L'lle Rousse, 281 
Literary club at Granada, a, 154 
society at Madrid, 154-71 
society at Paris, some, 40-43 
Living abroad, for and against, 

1-3, 28 
Local intelligence, lack of, in local 

papers, 122 
Lodging of sovereigns on their 

travels, 260, 272 
London, houses and prices at, 
300-01 
fatiguing character of, 301. 
George Gissing's opinion as 

to residence in, 301 
suburbs, 299, 300-01 
Long Walks, at Windsor, 300; at 

Versailles, 11 ; at Villefranche, 

222, 229, 300 
Loti, Pierre, 43, 100 



Lucca, 302-03 

the Baths of, houses and prices 
at, 303-04 
Luis de Leon, Fray, 192-93, 195 
Luxembourg, quarter of the, in 

Paris, 17 
Lyons, 84, 153, 313 

Madrid, modern appearance of, 
149-51, 153 ; palaces at, 151- 
52 ; houses and prices at, 152- 
53, 156, 162, 167 ; literary men 
of, 154-71 ; the Cortes at, 169 ; 
bull-fighting at, 169-73 

Maillane, 102 

Malaga, 120 

Malmaison, 63 

" Maria," Jorge Isaacs', 168 

Maria la Brava, Dofia, 181-83 

Marieton, Paul, 98-99 

Market, on the Paris boulevards, 
25 ; police regulation of, 25 

Marketing, in Versailles, 12-14 ; 
Paris, 25-27 ; Venice, 328 ; 
Verona, 338-39 
Jilet, or net, a, 25 
in small quantities, effect of, 
27 

Marne, banks of the, near Paris, 
62 

Marriage-book, a, 341 

Marseilles, 85, 105, 109, 153, 313 

Maupassant, Guy de, 35, 281 

Mayor of a French commune, a 
kindly, 236 

Mazzantini, 169-71 • 

Mediterranean, the, 109, 280 
a villa by the, 221 

Melnotte, Claude, 220 



3^4 



INDEX 



Mentone, io8, 244, 254 
" Miau," Perez Galdos', 159-60 
Michaelmas term, the, 4 
Middle class, the French, 34 
Midsummer's Day, 68 
" Mireille," or " Mireio," Mis- 
tral's, 103, 222 
Mistraly the violent wind of the, 

85, 90-91 
Mistral, Frederick, 86, 92, 99, loi- 

04 
Monaco, 108 

Mont Alban, the fort of, 219 
Mont Cenis tunnel, a baby in the, 

214 
Mont St. Michel, 4 
Monte Carlo, the village, 238, 
244-46 
Carlo, the Casino of, 239-50, 
Innocuous attacks on, 239, 
242-43; insidious methods 
of advertising, 238-42 ; 
moral atmosphere of, 244, 
250 ; press " retained " by, 
241-42 ; great profits of, 
240-41 ; general popularity 
of, 238, 244 ; play at, 242, 
246, 249 ; typical players at, 
245, 247-49 
Montelimar, the gorges of, 85 
Montmartre, 16, no 
Moorish farm, a, 11 4-1 6 
Moorish aspect and traits in Al- 
geria, 109-12, 117 
aspect and traits in Algeria, 
French encroachment on, 
no 
quarter, the, in Algerian 
towns, 117 



Moorish women in the omnibuses, 
112 

Morosaglia, 285-86 

Mosquitoes, plague of, in the Ri- 
viera, 222-23 

Mounet Sully, 100, loi 

Moving, a French : plans and 
prices of transportation, 210-15 

Mustapha Inferieur, in 
Superieur, 112 

Mutton, at Verona, 339 

Nanterre, 62, 63. 

Names, foreign transformation of 

English, 188, 334 
Napoleon, 84, 267, 285, 289-91 
Napoleon's Grotto, 289 

house, at Ajaccio, 289-91 
Neighbors at the Villa des Aman- 

diers, 230, 235-36, 257, 333 
Nemi, Lake of, 306 
" Nerto," Mistral's, 103 
Net for carrying market-produce, 

25 
Nevers, 66-83 

the pottery of, 68, 72-73 
"New Grub Street," Gissing's, 

301 
Nice, 107, 204, 234, 244, 319, 

355-56 
Nobility, French, deference of the, 

to the richer foreigners, 32-33 
Nomenclature of minor English 

houses, 298, 300 

" CEdipus the King," in the 
Roman theatre at Orange, 

lOI 

Old china, the taste for,#82 



INDEX 



365 



Olive-culture, 228, 232 

orchards, characteristics of, 
220 
Olive-oil mills, 228 
Oran, 118 
Orange, 84, 100 
Oranges, Riviera, 232 

effect of, in the landscape, 107, 
206 
Orange-blossom crop, the, 232 
Orezza, Springs of, the, 287 
Orleans, houses and prices at, 206 
Oued Fodda, 118 
Over-building mania, the, at Rome, 

307, 312-13; at Florence, 317 
Oxford, 293, 295-99 

houses and prices at, 294-98 
Oyster-fishing at Cancale, 6 

Palaces, of the Elyse'e, 31; the 
Escorial, 174; the Counts 
Giusti, 331, 340 
at the Exposition of '89, 51, 
56-57; at Madrid, 151; Sala- 
manca, 179; Rome, 309-10; 
Seville, 152; Venice, 321- 
25; Verona, 331, 340 
Palermo, 316 

Palazzina Giusti, the, site of, 330- 
31 ; ancient cypresses of, 330-31 ; 
plan of, 335-37; servants of, 
334-35, 349-50; marketing at, 
339; rent of, 339-40; upper gar- 
den of, 341-42; disadvantages 
of, 336, 343, 354-55; excursions 
from, 353-54 
Paris, scarcity of elevators, 1 5 ; the 
districts of the Arc de Triomphe, 
the Marais, Montmartre, the 



Latin Quarter, the Luxembourg, 
the Invalides, the Place St. 
Fran9ois Xavier, 15-22; renting 
usages, 20-21; plans of apart- 
ments, 21-22; renting furni- 
ture in, 22; furnishing an 
apartment in, 22-23; servants 
in, 23-25, 28 ; provisions in, 25; 
marketing, 25-27; heating, 29; 
winter weather in, 29; social life, 
30-34, 38-42; a convent at, 36- 
37; the Exposition of 1889, 44- 
57, 213; moving from, 210-11 

Paoli, 283-84, 285-86 

Paris suburbs, the, 58-65 

Farisienne, the typical, 145-46 

Parma violets, 232 

Passion-Play at Cabbe Roque- 
brune, the, 251-58 
gambling during, 253 

" Pata de Gazella," De Alencar's, 
274 

Patois, 13, 233, 338 

Pau, the town of, 204; houses and 
prices at, 205 

Pavilion Montespan, the, 64 

Peasant superstitions in illness, 235 
costumes, lack of picturesque, 

in the Riviera, 260 
costumes in Corsica, 287 

" Pepita Ximenez," Valera's, 169 

Perfumery, manufactories of, at 
Grasse, 268-69 

Perugia, 316-17 

Piedecroce, 287 

Piombino, 280 

Pisa, 302-03 

Pivot truss, the, 57 

Place Diamant, the, 290-91 



366 



INDEX 



Place des Vosges, the, i6 

Plans of houses or apartments 
in Paris, 2i; Villefranche, 225; 
Venice, 322, 326; Verona, 335 

Plans of International Expositions 
compared, 49 

Plaza Mayor, at Salamanca, the, 
176 

Point Pescade, 112 

Poitiers, 206 

Ponte Leccia, 286 

Ponte Novo, 284 

Pottery, passion for collecting, 
the, 69-82 
of Nevers, the, 72, 73 

Princess Marianne Bonaparte, the, 
290 

Principles of '89 and '93, discrimi- 
nated by Jules Ferry, 55 

Provence, 84-85, 95, 102, 122 

Provisions, character and cost of, 
at Paris, 26-27; Seville, 142; 
Villefranche, 234; Oxford, 298; 
Venice, 328; Verona, 339 

Public instruction in Spain, mod- 
ern law of, 186 

Puerta de Arenas, 135 

Puerta del Sol, the, 150 

Queen of England, at Grasse, 
the, 259-71 
of Italy, the, 307, 349 
of Roumania, the, 100 
Queens of Love and Beauty, in 

Provence, 97-98 
Quirinal at Rome, the, 305, 306- 
07, 349 

Rain, in the Riviera, 231 



Rain, in Northern and Western 

France, 3, 10, 15, 29, 206 
Ranee, the, 6 

Railway methods and prices, in 
transporting furniture, 212, 334 
" Realism " in Spanish fiction, 158 
Reciprocity, American, with Bra- 
zil, Dom Pedro's opinion of, 
274 
Rents of houses and apartments, in 
various places (see in detail, 
under head of Houses and 
Prices) 
calculated by the day, in Spain 
and Italy, 141, 325 
Rent-days in France, 4, 68 
Renting usages at Paris, 20-21 
Rhone, the, 93-94, 222 
Riviera, the French, i, 106-09, 
118, 215-80, 319, 332-34, 
355-56 
the Genoese, 215 
architecture in the, 216, 224 
agreeable climate of, in sum- 
mer, 228 
characteristics of, in winter 

and spring, 107, 237, 332 
mosquitoes in the, 222-23 
patois of the, 233 
restricted building sites in the, 

218, 237 
prejudice against the, 106 
Roads, excellent in back country 
of Spain, 131 
sunken, in Brittany, 8 
Roccola, or fowler's snare, a, 230 
Rock-cut dwellings at Granada, 

124; Cabbe Roquebrune, 252 
Rodriguez, Miguel, Professor, 196 



" Roniancero ,'' the, 98 

Rome, houses and prices at, 304- 
1 5 ; house-hunting, in the Stran- 
gers' Quarter, 308; on the Pin- 
cian, 308; at Trajan's Forum, 
310; at St. Peter's, 311; at the Co- 
losseum, 311; on the Esquiline, 
312; at the Villa Ludovisi, 312; 
at the Prati di Castelli, 312; on 
the Via Nazionale, 314; before 
the Campidoglio, 314; in the 
suburban villages, 305; modern 
improvements and architecture 
at, 316, 313-14; healthfulness, 
the question of, 309 

Rothschild, the Baroness Alice de, 
269-71 

Roumanille, 86, 93, 96-98 

Mademoiselle Therese, 97-98, 
104 

Rueil, 62 

Rue Obscur, at Villefranche, the, 
218 

Sabine Mts. , 305 
Salamanca, 175-202 

the University of, 187-202 
ancient student custom of 
"painting the town red," 
201-02 
Saliceti, the Canon, 285 
San Dalmazzo, 232 
San Remo, 244 
Sardines, fresh, 234 
Scallop-shell, use of the, in Span- 
ish architecture, 179 
Sceaux, 59-60 

Scholarships, or becas, at the Uni- 
versity of Salamanca, 186, 188 



INDEX 367 

Scholarships, or becas, for women, 
University of Salamanca, 188- 
89 

Scholl, Aurelien, 145 

Sculpture, ephemeral, at the Ex- 
position, ingenuity of, 53 

Servant-question, the, at Ver- 
sailles, 12, 26 ; Paris, 23-25 ; Se- 
ville, 142 ; Villefranche, 233 ; 
Oxford, 298 ; Verona, 337-38 

Servants by the day, the fejmne 
de menage system, 12, 26, 23-25, 
233. 338 

Seville, 140-45, 178 

houses and prices at, 141-42 

Sexes, the relations of, in social 
gayeties abroad, 39-40 

Shaler, American consul at Algiers, 

113 
" Sister San Sulpicio," Valdes', 

144, 163-66 
Siena, 316 
"Sketch of the State of Algiers," 

Shaler's, 113 
Small towns, difficulty of finding 

habitations in, 9, 293 
Social gayeties, French, 31-43 ; 

Spanish, 143-45, 156 ; Italian, 

345-46, 351-53 
Social intermingling of foreigners 

with the French, desirability of 

a closer, 33-34 
Soldiers, contemporary French, 

business-like aspect of, 4, 46 
Sorbonne, the, lectures at, 30 
Spain, castles in, 120 
Spanish climates, 120, 147, 149, 
152 
ecclesiastical treasures, 194 



368 



INDEX 



Spanish element in Algeria, 109 
gypsies at Granada, 124-25 
landscape, loneliness of, 133- 

34 
stage-coach luncheon, a, 134- 

35 
novelists, 157-71 
novelists in political posts, 

161, 167, 169, 196 
popular songs, 136-37, 147- 

48 
senator, a, 155-57 
stage-coach, a, 129-30 
social life, 143-45, 156 
universities, 189-90 
women, 138-39, 142, 144-48, 
156 
Spanish- American literature, 168 
St. Denis, 58 
St. Eugene, houses and prices at, 

112, 114 
St. Franjois Xavier, the Place de, 

18, 19, 65 
St. Germain, houses and prices at, 

62-64 
St. Jean, the day of, 68 
St. Jean, the village of, 216 
St. Jean de Luz, houses and prices 

at, 203 
St. Jeannet, 238 
St. John de Sahagan, 183 
St. Malo, 5, 6 
St. Mande, 60 
St. Martin Lantosque, 332 
St. Michel, the day of, 4, 68 
St. Michel, Mont, 4 
St. Maur, 61 
St. Paul du Var, 238 
St. Raphael, 107 



St. Remy, 91, 96 
St. Theresa, 147, 180 
Stage-coach, a Spanish, 128-29 
Strangers' quarter, the, in Paris, 

16 ; Rome, 308 
Street names, the later French, 67 
Students of Salamanca, numbers 

of, 199-200 
Student customs at Salamanca, 
197-202 
class-rooms at Salamanca, 195 
Suburbs of Paris, 58-63 

of Spanish cities, 120 
Suburban gardens, small, defects 

of, 59, 67-68 
Suicides at Monte Carlo, 238-39, 

243, 249 
Sun-dial, making a, 224 
Sunken roads in Brittany, 8 
Sunshine, pursuit of southward, 
19, 20, 66, 128, 224, 300, 
311, 322 
cut off by hilly sites in the 
Riviera, 237 
Superga, a home on the, 214 
"Swallow, the," Baroncelli- 
Javon's, 105 

Tarascon, 91-92 

Tariff-war, between France and 
Italy, effect of, on prices, 234, 
307, 356 

Terracing system in the Riviera 
218 

Tio Jindama, El, the bull-fight- 
ing newspaper, 173 

Tivoli, 305 

Tombs of Spanish sovereigns, 
beauty of, 125 



INDEX 



369 



" Tony," Madame Blanc's, 35-36 

Tours, 206 

Transplanting trees to the Expo- 
sition, 45-47 

' ' Trees, the Friends of," 236 

Troubadours at Avignon, the new, 
86, 93, 98-105 

Turin, 214 



" Une FzV," de Maupassant's, 281 
University of Salamanca, the, 187- 

202; women at the, 189-90 
Universities of Spain, other, 178 

Valdepenas, the wine of, 135 
Valdes, Armando Palacio, 144, 

162-66 
Valence, 84 

Valera, Juan, 147, 166-71 
Valley of the Consuls, 113 
Venice, 319; cold in winter, 324; 
hot in summer, 339; recent ad- 
vance of real estate values, 321 ; 
commercial aspect of the Grand 
Canal, 321 ; houses and prices at, 
321-29; heating, lighting, and 
water-supply at, 324, 326-27; 
landlords at, 325; separate street 
entrance for each apartment, 
325 
Verona, latter-day activity at, 330; 
battlements of, 331, 335; a pa- 
lazzina at, 330-31, 336-43, 353" 
55; custom-house formalities at, 
334; domestic service at, 337-38; 
marketing and cost of provisions 
at, 337; economics at, 339-40; 
climate of, 336, 343, 353-55 



Versailles, the town, park and pal- 
ace, 10-12, 15, 62, 63 
housekeeping at, 10, 12-14 
Vicenza, 354 
Vienne, 84 
Villa architecture in the Riviera, 

216, 224 
** Villa des Amandiers," the, 221- 

37, 319, 332-33 
manner of life at, 235-38 
Villa Ludovisi, the, 312 
Villeneuve-les-Avignon, 94-95 
Vincennes, 60 

Violet train, to Paris, the, 232 
*' Violin, the Faience," 68-82 
VioUet-le-duc, his monument to the 

Bonaparte sovereigns, at Ajac- 

cio, 291 
Vizzavona, 287 

Walled towns, the taste for, 5, 

331 
Wash, the family, comparative 

treatment of, 28 
Water system of the Riviera, the, 

226 
Wild-flowers, in the Riviera, 229, 

332 
Windsor, houses and prices at, 300 
Winter climates, Paris, 29; Pisa 

and Nice compared, 303; the 

Riviera, 237 
Wine, French, skepticism as to, 

since the prevalence of phyl- 
loxera, 27, 234 
Women, French, originality of, in 
dress, 32; the literary view 
of morality of, 35; con- 
vent education of, 36-37; 



370 



INDEX 



patriotism of, 38; alleged 
freedom of, after marriage, 
38; habits in society, 39-40; 
literary and semi-literary, 

40-43 

Italian, as landlords, 325, 344; 
manners of, in the country, 
345; . in the provincial 
towns, 350, 353; an ad- 
mirable type of young, 346- 
48; influence of the Queen 
upon, 349; "cosmopolitan," 
351; blonde types of, 352; 
as housekeepers, 352 

Spanish, as exemplified by a 
beauty at Cordova, 138-39; 
tobacco-girls and dames of 



higher rank at Seville, 143; 
a type of domestic perfec- 
tion at Seville, 145; a cer- 
tain fixity of character in, 
146; a monarchical-radical, 
146; an adorable saint, 
157-58 
at the University of Sala- 
manca, 189-go 
Workmen at the Exposition, 47- 
48, 52 

Xenil, the, 124, 126 



ZoRiLLA, the crowning of at the 
Alhambra, 100, 154 



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